Loved it, it but don’t blame you for feeling otherwise.

I remember a few years ago sitting on a back porch with several literary-minded friends, hardcore readers and writers, all of whom were (it seemed to me) pretending to like 2666; by the end of the conversation they’d begun, in stride, to dryly rationalize the Part about the Crimes (if i remember the section titles correctly) in terms of various tropes and literary devices even though it was obvious, by then, that they hadn’t actually read the whole thing and had no desire to do so. I felt alone, suddenly, as if this book that spoke to my heart and I were alone and abandoned. I was aware that I was being ridiculous.

For me — a former academic person who fled from a doctoral program — the depiction of the Archimboldeans in the beginning made me laugh and felt like real catharsis. From there on I never stopped digging the book, which remains top 5 for me. I enjoy the characters; his descriptions (one in a German castle for example) are f-ing gorgeous; and for me there are subtle threads running through the book that I haven’t seen anyone else address in a story.

But I wouldn’t feel bad about disliking it. I think there are many readers & writers like you. It’s a super odd book. Plus if I have the back story right (I may not at all) I think that Bolaño wanted to edit it more and may have changed it around a good deal before he ran out of life.

Maybe you’ll like it later. Or maybe its arguably subtle/arguably clunky maximalist approach is just not the thing right now.