Beckett, Bakhtin, Balaño . . .

Having just finished 2666 – jaw dropped, stunned, amazed – how did he do that? is it all done with mirrors? – I am obliged to question your surgical violence (Being Cut in Half). Do the nearly 900 pages amount to a big book? Yes, I guess . . . but, of course, it's not about the number of pages, rather, like Dr Who's Tardis, it's about what's inside. And in this case, all of us poor, lost humanity streams through those pages.

 

You use the word pornography, but that's not the right word. There's tremendous fluidity and a graphic force (a comic book!!?) but without the limitation of a specific image. A world broken by our violence, by our loss, mediated through a vast range of characters, and the nature and practice of writing; a world that is opened through the work of literary criticism, looked at, examined through the lenses of Europe and Mexico. Opens up the proverbial can of worms: violence, male violence to women, sexuality, war and our heroic attempts to make a life, to make it real, to make something of ourselves, to make understanding. The dynamic of borders and depth: deep inside Mexico, yet right by the US border; the trampling of borders as the Wehrmacht marches east and west, expanding and then contracting in retreat and defeat. There's the mysterious writer von Archimboldi – lost, invisible, a giant striding the world, dragged from the sea into terror and violence.

 

And talking of giants, who is this gaunt, paunchy figure striding, no, more of a stumbling, dragging his skinny nag behind him? Could it be Don Quixote? No, I do believe it's Squire Maxie up to his tricks. It seems we have an arrangement to meet in the tiltyard . . . I shall have to knock my armour into shape, look for a few weapons, or perhaps I can hurl some bricks from behind this wall.


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