SOUNDTRACK: FUGAZI-Steady Diet of Nothing (1991).
Jangly noisy guitars open the track (and then a lengthy silence after a minute or so). And this loud/soft dynamic is pretty dramatic on this disc.
There’s a slot of really cool sounds (within the framework of loud noisy alterna-punk). “Reclamation” opens with some harsh guitar harmonics over a kind of spoken verse, but it bursts into a great chorus. “Nice New Outfit” is quite catchy (even if lyrically it’s very dark). But by the middle of the disc, it feels like some of the songs aren’t quite as interesting.
Of course, the instrumental “Steady Diet” is noisy and wonderful. And “Runaway Return” has a catchy noisiness to it. But the band comes back to a high point with “Polish” and the thoughtful “Justice Letter” (written about favored Supreme Court Justice William Brennan who retired in 1990).
This record is a cool departure from the first disc. To me it’s not quite as immeiate as Repeater, and yet it still has some really powerful songs. I find that no matter how many times I listen to it there’s a few tracks that never grab me, but overall, this is another great release from Fugazi.
[READ: Week of April 26, 2010] 2666 [pg 831-893]
Wow.
The book is over and I am blown away. I don’t know if it was the set up, or my utterly lowered expectations or the complete lack of connections previous to this, but I had assumed that this story would end (well, actually exactly as it did, with him going to Mexico) but the 30 pages before the end blew me away. I can’t get over how nicely he tied so much together and in such an unexpected way. I could not tear myself away from the end. Wow.
I’m still not sure how I feel about the whole book. I’ll do a final thoughts post after I digest, but the ending of the book was immensely satisfying.
The final week’s reading begins with some sadness, but very mild sadness. Ingeborg is sick once again. [Wandering around in the snow like that, honestly]. She is hospitalized and goes a little insensible (raving at just about everyone). Archimboldi spends most of his time at her side, trying to get her through it. Their local landlord, Leube, visits her twice. Both times he brings them a package of local bread and cheese. On the second visit he reveals that the rumors are correct: he did kill his wife: he threw her in the ravine. He then dragged her back up and laid her out in the house. He built a coffin and buried her. And now he lives alone, “As it should be” (834). [This senseless killing echoes the part about the crimes, but I can’t decide exactly how it ties together.]
Archimboldi asks why he told him all this and Leube says he wants Ingeborg to know she was correct.
Ingeborg, after coughing up blood, has made a decent recovery. [I’m realizing that Ingeborg plays a nice contrast to the women of Santa Teresa: she seems down and out every few months, even coughing up blood, (she has also been sodomized, but at least she wasn’t raped) and yet she keeps pulling through. Is that significant?] Archimboldi and Ingeborg decide to travel (and decide not see her mother or sisters).
They lived on various funds (Archimboldi may have even robbed an American tourist or two (they are easy to rob, unlike Italians). He also received money from Bubis. On one occasion, The Baroness brought him some funds. They met for drinks and then he left.
The stories of the Baroness and A&I’s European tours parallel: A&I to Florence and then a small village; the baroness (and her lover) swimming as the guest of Milanese editors and meeting authors. Then the baroness hears that Ingeborg has died. [Fascinating that we hear this from her point of view rather than while focusing on Archimboldi] in a remote village on the Adriatic coast. The baroness travels there spontaneously, not really even knowing where to go. When she arrives in the village, she learns that the German man’s wife died and the man left. She drowned and her body was never found.
And then Archimboldi fell off the radar completely.
Four years after his disappearance, Bubis received a manuscript for Archimboldi’s next book, Inheritance. It was a tangled mess of handwritten notes and edits, but Bubis was delighted with it. And since the baroness was currently in Italy, Bubis asked her to visit him in Venice.
She had a lover in Venice with whom she was visiting. He took her to meet the author Moravia, with whom she was not impressed. And so, the baroness left that night without telling her lover that she was leaving and went to visit Archimboldi. (Her lover was totally freaked out). He was long-haired and long-bearded and he welcomed her warmly (his nostrils flared as if breathing her in).
From here the narrator grows rather vague [and this is quite fascinating to me]:
What did they do that day and the next? Probably they talked and fucked, more the latter than the former, because that night the baroness didn’t return to the Danieli, to the distress of her [lover], who had read novels about mysterious disappearances in Venice, especially of tourists of the weaker sex…” (840).
And yet this vagueness is replaced by a paragraph of certainty: “They talked about his job as a gardener…how cold it was in Venice…about some American writers…the baroness’s vanished cousin, the ill-fated Hugo Hadler, and Archimboldi’s family, whom Archimboldi had finally found (841). [That bit about his family is very nice, although I could have heard a bit more about it, but…all things in time, right?].
Archimboldi visited Bubis for one last time, to check a proof of inheritance (and add 100 more pages) [since there are some spoken parallels between 2666 and Infinite Jest, this little passage made me think very much of IJ (or even the current state of The Pale King, coming in bits and pieces like that). This was the last time he saw Bubis, who would die a few years later, but not without publishing four more of Archimboldi’s novels.
We learn that Bubis has been involved in sweeping and idle debates about German writers. And, here we get a very strange little diversion (which I enjoyed very much) about the Museum of Errors, a selection of “cultured pearls” (842) of for lack of a better way to say it, bad sentences.
Because this sort of joke amuses me, I’m going to include some of my favorites:
“The duke appeared followed by his entourage, which preceded him” Letters from My Mill, Alphonse Daudet.
“With his hands clasped behind his back, Henri strolled about the garden, reading his friend’s novel” Le Cataclysme, Rosny.
“Silently the corpse awaited the autopsy” Luck’s Favoite, Octave Feuillet.
“I can hardly see anymore, sad the poor blind woman.” Beatrix, Balzac.
“After they cut off his head, they buried him alive” The Death of Mongomer, Henri Zvedan. (843)
The group discusses these quotes and comes up with (rather humorous) explanations for each error. This was probably the most lighthearted (and smart-assed) section of the whole novel and it gave me a bit of a break from the heaviness. [A very brief look online could not confirm the existence of any of these lines. Some of the book titles were real, but I couldn’t find these quotes from them].
After Inheritance, Archimboldi wrote Saint Thomas, an apocryphal biography of a biographer whose subject is a great writer of the Nazi regime [Distant Star anyone?]. Then Archimboldi moved to the Greek island of Icaria. And we get another look at Sisyphus. He escaped his fate by saying that his wife had failed to perform the proper funeral rites. He said he would go back to earth and put things right (and punish her). Hades agrees and Sisyphus returned to earth and lived to a ripe old age.
His next book was The Blind Woman. It’s about a blind woman who didn’t know she was blind and clairvoyant detectives who didn’t know they were clairvoyant. The Black Sea came next (in which the black sea converses with the Atlantic Ocean an hour before dawn). Then came Lethaea (which was deemed pornographic and was his best seller).
Two more novels: The Lottery Man (a German who sells lottery tickets in New York) and The Father (A son recalls his father’s activities as a psychopathic killer). [The total of these books doesn’t add up to the 4 that Bubis is supposed to have published, unless The Black Sea, which is said to be a drama, doesn’t count. I also don’t have a real sense for when this is happening. The final book ends in 1948, but I don’t know if that is future or current or even distant past Dates are given later, but nothing is given for the publishing dates of these books].
Archimboldi moved back to the Continent and read about Bubis’ death in the paper. He thought about sending a note of condolence but couldn’t decide what to say properly, so he did nothing. This is one of the few deaths in the book that ends nicely: Bubis died while laughing heartily at a manuscript by a young writer from Dresden.
Archimboldi moved to Italy and sent in a manuscript for The Return [which is, perhaps interestingly, the name of Bolaño’s forthcoming collection of short stories.] [Does this make 11 books? Do I need to go back to Part One and see if they gave Archimboldi’s bibliography?]. Mrs Bubis flew to Milan and then met him in Venice. And they chatted like old friends. She also gave him a lot of money because his back catalog had been selling very well all of a sudden.
After this, he traveled a lot, carrying only his clothes and his typewriter. From time to time he would stop in at computer stores and look into getting a computer. But he didn’t buy one until laptops became an option [so we’ve jumped a head quite far at this point] and then when he could get one with a modem, he got rid of the old laptop and bot one with a modem. I’m very intrigued by this ending (punctuation especially): “What did he do with the typewriter Bubis had given him? He flung it off a cliff onto the rocks!” (850).
While he was searching the Internet, he learned of the death of Hermes Popescu [man, this section is chock full of people returning from oblivion]. His obituary explains what happened to him after the war: he got involved in murky business deals and he made a lot of money but he was very generous to all who asked (as long as they stopped attacking Romania in Romanian–he’d rather they do it in French).
Then one day and old crippled captain, who worked under Entrescu showed up at Popescu’s office [and clearly the details of this section could not have been included in the obituary]. I am fascinated by this part too:
When Popescu saw the captain come in, he leaped like a boy from chair to chair…. He pretended to urinate in a corner and a few drips trickled out [!!!!!] The only thing he didn’t do was frolic on the rug. (851).
They spend time reminiscing, and as they converse, Popescu keeps reiterating “And you were there?” “And you were there?” “And you were there waiting for this kind word?” [Which, you know, never bodes well]. The captain keeps focusing on the fact that the General brought them to a certain location and everywhere they dug there were bones and bones and more bones. Why had he brought them there?
After an evening of dining (the best steak the captain had had) two Hungarians approached and took him out. Popescu tells them “You’d better throw this one in the Seine. And make sure he stays in” (855).
Popescu later
fell in love with a Central American Actress Asunción Reyes (a beautiful woman) whom he married. They traveled to Honduras (to Tegucigalpa, a city clearly divided into clans: the majority Indians and sick and the minority White (actually mestizos) who wield all the power. He promised money to build a metro there. But once he and Asunción divorced, her forgo about it.
Archimboldi didn’t know many German writers, but he was friends with a French essayist. This writer wants to take him to the the house for Vanished Writers. He is shocked by the number of French writers there (he didn’t know there were many vanished French writers). This section is quite sweet and weird and calming until Archimboldi sees the front door and learns that rather than a place for vanished writers, it is in fact, the Mercier Clinic, Rest Home–Neurological Center. The French essayist had brought him to an asylum. He quickly gathered his things and fled the building.
During all this time the only person he kept in touch with the baroness. Mostly they wrote to each other, although sometimes she would visit him. Their meetings were genial and friendly, although her letters were often steamy and sexual.
Since Archimboldi had cut himself off from most news, he hadn’t even heard of the fall of the Berlin Wall (of course the baroness was there when it happened). She tells him that he’s famous, he should come back to Germany for a press conference or an interview. “Only in my worst nightmare, Archimboldi wrote her ” (861).
During one of the letters, he asked about Hugo Hadler, but she said she hadn’t heard about him since the war. She also admitted that she never read his novels (she didn’t read “dark or difficult novels” ). He asked her why they kept publishing them?
(A) Because she knew he was good (B) because Bubis told her to and (C) because few publishers actually read the books they published (863).
When the baroness turned 80 people wondered what would happen to the publishing company (there were no heirs anywhere). But she said simply, “I’ll never die…or I’ll die at ninety-five which is the same thing as never dying” (864).
The final time they met, Archimboldi was going deaf, but he listened to her very carefully.
My concerns about not hearing more about his family are put to rest as we then move on to Lotte Reiter’s story.
There’s a bit of overlap on her life from what we heard earlier, but it’s nice to devote time just to her. She was born in 1930 and was blonde with blue eyes. She has kind of sad upbringing. She missed her brother who was out of her life almost from the beginning. And she dreamed about him a lot. She also dreamed about the war a lot (and her father told her that if the soldiers looked clean then they weren’t dead, because dead soldiers look like they’ve been playing in mud.
But the war hit them hard and they were forced to move. They marched West (Lotte saw soldiers marching and asked about her brother: one battalion said they didn’t know him, the other older, more ghostly battalion told her he was dead or trying to kill himself, or fleeing the war. They settled in Paderborn where Lotte’s mother’s brother lived. They crashed in his place with some squatters, but things were too hard and soon Lotte’s father died. And, since no one had heard from Lotte’s brother, they assumed he was dead.
But Lotte’s mother soon started dating again. And Lotte began dating as well. After several suitors, Lotte’s mother decided to get married to a mechanic. Around the same time, Lotte started dating…wait for it… Werner Haas. [Oh My God, a connection!].
They were madly in love, taking trips to the countryside and being generally adorable and happy. Although her attitude at the time was that “she and Werner and all the young people born around 1930 or 1931 were fated to be unhappy” (868). She was also plagued by more dreams around this time. In one dream, she saw a boar in death throes surrounded by little dead boars. In a line that is so Bolaño to me: “For a while, she thought about becoming a vegetarian. Instead she took up smoking.” (869).
Then he proposed to her. Lotte said she’d have to think about it. And think she did. She even started dating a married man while she was thinking about it. Then several months later, not having given up, Werner came back and she accepted. Werner began working at the mechanic’s shop (and even doing overtime for the locals). And they were quite comfortable.
Then out of the blue, the mechanic died. Werner naturally took over the shop (even though he’d have preferred if someone else did). But it meant more money (and also more vacations).
Lotte and Werner talked about having children, but they weren’t sure if they really wanted to, what with the cold war and everything. But when Lotte got pregnant that sort solved that question. The birth was normal and quick and the baby was named…wait for it…think back now….KLAUS HAAS. [This had me so excited I couldn’t stand it]. Lotte got pregnant again, but miscarried and was thereafter unable to conceive, so Klaus would be their only child. He wasn’t the smartest kid in the world, and he tended to get in fights, but he was very well-loved by his family.
When Klaus was 12, Lotte’s mother died. While she was dying, he went to visit her and she mistook him for Archimboldi. Klaus had even thought about his uncle before (he never really knew anything about him before). And so he started asking Lotte about him. They didn’t really provide him with much but the most basic picture: he was a nice man and very quiet. But Lotte did say that she always thought of him as…a giant!
At 17, Klaus got into serious trouble: theft of a car and sexual assault of an Italian girl. He was sent to a reformatory; when he was released he started working for his father. He showed amazing aptitude for mechanics. But he wasn’t wholly reformed and he kept getting into minor trouble. Finally, he decided he needed to leave the small town and he headed for Munich. After several months he decided there was no future in Germany or Europe so he set out for America.
He sent the family a postcard from the Statue of Liberty to say he had arrived, and he sent one more letter from Georgia when he moved there. But aside from that, he never contacted his family. [At this point I felt terrible for Lotte that first her brother and then her son just take off and never communicate in any way]. She imagined his life, with an imaginary wife and children, but her dreams were never fully realized.
Werner got sick and decided to stop working. He turned over the mechanic’s shop to a trusted worker and he and Lotte set out to traveling. They cruised around Europe and then headed to New York. Of course, they then traveled to Georgia but there was no sign of Klaus. And no one knew anything about him. They hired a detective to try to locate him, but after a month (and reasonable expenses) he turned up nothing.
Soon after, Werner died and Lotte was alone. But rather than growing sad, she took the opportunity to start anew. She started working more and taking up new hobbies as well. She even went about topless bathing at the beach.
Then in 1995 [and, unless I a mistaken, this is the first concrete date we have been given about any thing that has happened, aside from births (and WWII, obviously) and the Part About the Crimes] she received a telegram from Mexico. From a place called Santa Teresa. It said that Klaus was in prison. [Cue sound effect of a puzzle piece falling into place].
She hired a translator who could speak Spanish and English and got in touch with Klaus’ lawyer (Isabel). Her name was Ingrid and she was very helpful. Ingrid called Klaus’ lawyer and learned that he was in prison for killing several women. Lotte immediately decided to fly to Mexico to see her son.
They flew to L.A., then to Tuscon where they rented a car and drove to Santa Teresa, where Lotte saw her son for the first time in years.
Lotte stays in a hotel with Ingrid and since she can’t sleep, she gets transfixed by Mexican TV, especially all the preachers. [I though she might see La Santa, but there’s enough connections already, right?.] Lotte updated Klaus on everything she could. And he absorbed it all, impassive and almost hostile . On the third day he asked about his uncle [Archimboldi]. He said he was having bad dreams about him [this would no doubt be the dreams about the giant in the woods, right?]
Lotte and Ingrid next flew to Tijuana where the consul informed them that they knew everything about Klaus’s case. And since he was an American citizen it complicated things tremendoulsy.
When they returned to Germany, Ingrid bought Lotte a Spanish-German dictionary and Lotte leaned that she had something of a knack for languages.
In 1996 she returned to Santa Teresa. Klaus’ trial was supposed to be in 1996 but it was postponed. Klaus called her from his cell phone. But when she tired to call him back (after getting the number from his lawyer) the phone was busy for hours.
In 1997, the trial went ahead. Lotte traveled back to Santa Teresa. The trail lasted twenty days and Klaus was found guilty of the murder of four women. Klaus’ lawyer accompanied Lotte to the hotel and they stayed together for sometime. The lawyer was as upset as Lotte. Lotte asked if they were sleeping together. The lawyer said yes. And then she promised that mistrial would be declared. And she would work non-stop because “what Klaus gives me is priceless” (885). [What on earth could that be?]
In 1998, the mistrial was declared. She went to Santa Teresa twice for a total of 45 days. On one instance she couldn’t rent a car and had to take a taxi from Tuscon to Santa Teresa. The driver told her to have her son pick her up next time.
In 1999, the lawyer came to pick her up in Tuscon, but overall, she was not in good health so she did not travel much. In 2000, she couldn’t get to Mexico but she talked on the phone to the lawyer.
In 2001, [Klaus has been in jail for 6 years!] she felt strong enough to travel to Mexico. While she was waiting at the Frankfurt airport, she bought a book for the flight. She picked a book called The King of the Forest by someone called Benno von Archimboldi. The short book was about a one-legged father and a one-eyed mother and their two children: a boy who liked to swim and a girl who followed her brother to the cliffs. “As the plane crossed the Atlantic Lotte realized in astonishment that she was reading a part of her childhood” (887).
Although there was no author photograph, his birthdate was given as 1920 (the year her brother was born) and that he was also a possible Nobel recipient.
When she got to the prison, Klaus was as usual cold and distant, but when Lotte said that she had a book by his uncle, he took it happily (well, happily for him). Before she let go she wrote down the publishing house information. She called the publishing house from the hotel and left a message that she was Lotte Reiter, Benno von Archimboldi’s sister. When she finally got in touch with Mrs Bubis, she told her who she was and, in a flood of emotion, she told her everything that had been happening in her life.
Mrs Bubis asked for her address in Paderborn and said “You were a very blond, pale child and sometimes your mother brought you with her when she came to work at the house” (889). [That must have blown Lotte’s mind].
One night, three months after she returned to Germany, her brother knocked on her door. [My marginal note simply: WOW!].
Archimboldi said that he was over 80 years old (which would make Lotte about 70 and Mrs Bubis nearly 90). And Lotte filled his head with questions and comments [and I found the rush of questions and comments and the whole chaos of the conversation to be incredibly moving and emotional]. And as their conversation came to an end, and after Lotte had told him all about Klaus and Santa Teresa, she asked him twice, “Will you take care of it all?” (891).
And the final section of the book opens with “Fürst Pücker.” [Which I had to read twice or three times]. Fürst Pücker is a sort of Neapolitan ice cream cake. Archimboldi is in the Hamburg airport, catching a direct flight to Mexico right after leaving Lotte. While in the airport he orders Fürst Pücker. The only other person in the airport was an older gentleman who asked if he enjoyed the Fürst Pücker. When Archimboldi said yes, the man came over and explained that a forbear of his created the Fürst Pücker. He was an author, a botanist, a poet. But he is most remembered for the ice cream.
Archimboldi takes his leave of the man and “the next morning he was on his way to Mexico” (893).
COMMENTS
In last week’s reading I said I hoped only that we would get to see Archimboldi leave for Mexico (I’m glad I didn’t say I wanted to see him arrive in Mexico). Whether I had been so beaten down by expectations or what, I don’t know, but I set them pretty low. And I was thrilled to get all of this information! So may loose ends were tied, loose ends that I never expected to see together. Each of those last 30 pages was like a weight lifting off my 2666-bogged-down-head. I’m still not sure what I think of the book overall, but the ending was euphoric.
As I was writing his up, I kept smiling because of the emotional outpouring of that scene. And the funny thing is is that it wasn’t even described very emotionally. Lotte herself barely does anything but ask questions, and yet it felt like a bottle had been uncorked. It felt like an entire book full of people not connecting and drifting apart was brought together in these 30 pages. Does it make up for the death? I’m not sue yet. I’m not even sure if I think Klaus is not guilty. Heck, I can’t even imagine what Archimboldi could “do” when he got to Mexico. And yet somehow, it all feels better.
I’m going to process the book a little bit more and will write some final thoughts in a couple of days, but right now, I’m feeling very happy.
For ease of searching I include: Bolano
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