Tag Archives: teaching

2666 III: Order with the Possibility of Suicide

Posted on January 31, 2026 by Jon

“The Part of Amalfitano” is, at almost exactly eighty pages, the shortest of the five parts that make up 2666. It expands on the character, circumstances, and history of Oscar Amalfitano, a professor at the University of Santa Teresa and … Continue reading → Continue reading →

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2666 II: Machine Reading

Posted on January 27, 2026 by Jon

Upon reaching the end of “The Part of the Crimes,” it is hard to see how it could have stood on its own. And yet, according to the note that prefaces the entire novel, that was Bolaño’s plan, communicated just … Continue reading → Continue reading →

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The Savage Detectives II: The Limits of Heteroglossia

Posted on January 27, 2026 by Jon

The second part of The Savage Detectives is itself entitled “The Savage Detectives,” with the addition of the dates: 1976–1996. What then is the relationship between this part and the book as a whole? Is this the core, the essence … Continue reading → Continue reading →

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2666 I

Posted on January 22, 2026 by Jon

This blog post is something of a placeholder… I admit that for various reasons I have yet to get fully into Bolaño’s novel. I am a little past page 100, almost exactly halfway through the first of the five “parts” … Continue reading → Continue reading →

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The Savage Detectives I

Posted on January 11, 2026 by Jon

The first part of Roberto Bolaño’s The Savage Detectives, just under 140 pages (in the Picador edition) and entitled “Mexicans Lost in Mexico (1975),” is presented as a series of diary entries written by one Juan García Madero between the … Continue reading → Continue reading →

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Reading Fiction is Back?

Posted on December 22, 2025 by Jon

Man Carrying Thing on YouTube, in a video entitled “Self-help is dead. It’s time to read fiction”, is quite amusing and acerbic on literature and how it is framed (h/t Daniel), and he also says a thing or two germane … Continue reading → Continue reading →

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AI, The Savage Detectives, and Verbosity

Posted on November 9, 2025 by Jon

My wife, Fiona, is reading The Savage Detectives. In fact, she was given the book, by a friend, some seven or eight years ago, but at the time–perhaps a little intimidated by the novel’s length–she didn’t get much further than … Continue reading → Continue reading →

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Long TV, affect, and mortality

Posted on October 29, 2025 by Jon

Some thoughts on long TV from another old Harpers article, this time Adam Wilson’s “Good Bad Bad Good: What was the Golden Age of TV?” (vol. 339, no. 2033 [October 2019]:43–53): One reason that TV shows develop cult followings is … Continue reading → Continue reading →

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The Book as Prison: Edoardo Albinati’s The Catholic School

Posted on October 27, 2025 by Jon

Tim Parks’s review for Harpers (vol. 339, no. 2032 [September 2019]: 84–88) of Edoardo Albinati’s The Catholic School refers frequently to the book’s length. After all, even though it managed to scale “the bestseller lists and [win Italy’s] most prestigious … Continue reading → Continue reading →

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