the code for the bolaño one is not so good, although the explanation improves it (i think all the others snippets give you a fair idea of what to expect in a book by the author; that really doesn't).
when i first skimmed the article i got down to that section, read the code, with a list of names, and expected something french and post-modern. was really surprised when i checked back to the title to see bolaño.
(if you haven't read him, i wouldn't start with 2666, but with the savage detectives, which is a really sweet, funny, smart novel. also, if you speak spanish as a second language, he's very easy to read in the original - a modern, simple, colloquial style, just like you're used to speaking.)
[edit: huh; i don't even remember the dream sequences at the start of 2666, so maybe my bad. will have to go back and re-read. edit2: oh, yeah, i do remember. ok... but there's nothing like that in any other book of his i have read. hmph. you might as well characterise his writing as a list of murders.]
It seemed like a pretty obvious reference to 2666 to me. The first part of the book has a number of dream sequences where its characters will just list off philosophers and put them into groups and connect them with lines. Definitely took me a few days to get through that book.
It´s very well written but I can´t stand(nor understand) the way writers expand the thickness of the books just adding nonsense parts to the stories. And they get rewarded by that!
Pamuk´s "Black book" is a 2 inch thick book of Istanbul streets descriptions, and... that´s it.
I forced myself to finish it because I thought:"there should be something else, is not possible that all this is for nothing". I was wrong.
when i first skimmed the article i got down to that section, read the code, with a list of names, and expected something french and post-modern. was really surprised when i checked back to the title to see bolaño.
(if you haven't read him, i wouldn't start with 2666, but with the savage detectives, which is a really sweet, funny, smart novel. also, if you speak spanish as a second language, he's very easy to read in the original - a modern, simple, colloquial style, just like you're used to speaking.)
[edit: huh; i don't even remember the dream sequences at the start of 2666, so maybe my bad. will have to go back and re-read. edit2: oh, yeah, i do remember. ok... but there's nothing like that in any other book of his i have read. hmph. you might as well characterise his writing as a list of murders.]