Waggish brilliantly perceptive on 2666 - I'd missed entirely Bolano's subversion of the Bildungsroman. Archimboldi's introspection is dissolved; the writer disappears/ emerges into history. It happens so many times in Bolano's fiction, I would want to say (and would have to substantiate). It's the key, the central movement.

From the study into history … is that what disperses the poet-heroes of The Savage Detectives? The slaughterbench of history: is that what we see – taste – in The Part About the Killings. 2666 (the date) is only a name for the slaughterbench, for an apocalypse without God, when the absence of God reveals the absence of plan. Chaos. Scattering. The Sonora Desert …