Spoiler alert: There is no plot. For almost 900 pages, Roberto Bolaño takes you on a journey through five “stories”, each with seemingly less of a point than the previous. All sections relate to each other in sometimes the smallest way, resulting in a precarious web that often threatens to disintegrate all together. One by one, we are dropped unceremoniously into each of these stories with little or no warning and are challenged by the author to swim. I admit that I nearly sunk several times, but somehow made it to the finish line, mentally battered and bruised though I was. The main reason for this is Bolaño’s obvious skill as a writer. His prose and language are so rich that he could write about food in his refrigerator and you would read the entire thing, riveted the whole way through.
The story begins with four scholars who are the top experts of the author Benno von Archimboldi. Beyond the love of his work is an obsession with the mystery that surrounds him. Archimboldi is a hermit that only surfaces long enough to occasionally publish a book and the absurdity of his name when paired with his German background only heightens the air of intrigue. Guided by several tips haphazardly pieced together, they embark on the journey to Santa Teresa, a Mexican border city, in an attempt to find him.
The minutiae that in most books would be cut out is kept and cultivated until we are given a picture of scholars’ lives heavily saturated with color and depth. Just as you begin to find the rhythm of the narrative through all the excessive detail, its over and section two begins. Here we meet Amalfitano, only we’ve meet him before, as he was the Santa Teresa guide for our scholars that we have left behind and will not encounter again. So it progresses; each section with its own story and theme (love, insanity, race, murder) until we come face to face with Archimboldi himself in section five.
It’s worth noting that Bolaño had originally intended for each section to be its own book. Upon his death, the people responsible for it felt that these stories were one, and published them as such. It’s possible that as separate books the structure would feel less like fragments glued together. I don’t mean that as a criticism (at least I don’t now), because ultimately when you are done, you realize that none of it was important, but somehow it was. The human experience is a big and intricate web, with a beginning that we do not know and an end that we cannot see. It constantly shifts and changes, grows and shrinks and the individual parts hardly matter. In my opinion, Bolaño has handed us a snap shot of a small section of the web. So take it, read it, and when you’re done, put the book away and let it go because like life, full of wonder and detail it may be, it was never meant to be held onto.
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