Powell's Books BLOG: Book News for Monday, March 9, 2009 - by Brockman:
For Whom the Rooster Crows: The 2009 Morning News Tournament of Books is underway! The first round pits Roberto Bolaño's ginormasticalacious 2666 against Fae Myenne Ng's sadly overmatched Steer toward Rock. There isn't really much of a contest here, and the first-round judge (some snarky lit-blogger nobody's ever heard of) rules along predictable lines.
However, I smell a whiff of high-school book-report panic in the judge's overextended (according to commentator Kevin Guilfoile) basketball metaphor.
[Kevin: Man, there was a lot of basketball stuff going on in Brockman’s judgment there. I know we kind of invited that with our March Madness-like brackets and our play-by-play commentary, but there might be such a thing as carrying an already thin metaphor too far. I’m just saying, you know, for future reference.]*
One almost gets the impression the judge *started* every book of 2666, but couldn't quite make it to the end of any of them. One senses he was maybe a little too intimidated to admit he couldn't see the luxurious robes word emperor's robes situation the literary establishment (and some of his *uber*-literary coworkers) were shrieking about — he just saw a naked emperor with knobby knees. It could be the judge was partly baffled that this "all-time greatest masterpiece of our century" wasn't even able to give the literary critics in the first book distinct personalities — you could only distinguish them because one was a woman, one was in a wheelchair, and the other two...weren't. There's no denying that the intensity builds stronger in the later books, especially the much-written-about third one (despite the ultimately numbing effect of a subject that should retain its shock), but perhaps the judge kept wishing a writer with a better sense of drama and character were at the helm — like Richard Price (see Lush Life, whose absence from this year's TOB is really a crime). And so, like a public schooler who's terrified to admit he doesn't think A Farewell to Arms is hot snot and, not wanting to be the idiot who didn't "get it," tries to cover it up by writing his book report in a too-clever satire of Hemingway's style, one can glimpse the Round One judge cowering behind his own metaphor.
In fairness, although the judge may have succumbed to cowardice in failing to present these quibbles, he really did like 2666 more than Steer toward Rock. So, the outcome is not a lie by any means. It's just a shame that Guilfoile and John Warner's comments ended up much closer to the judge's *full* opinion than the printed verdict.

*not too clever! not over-extended. that's what was remarkable!
-maro: just piping up here to say that I loved your execution of the basketball metaphor. I just read your judgment through for the first time, and I was totally impressed with your writing. I'm here checking out the archive of your Powells blog posts for that reason! I think what impressed me was exactly that the metaphor never seemed over-extended or forced. I expected that it would, at that length, but you kept the description of court action vivid *and* clearly representative of actual qualities in the narratives of the two books. I have not yet read the commentary from the box, but before having Kevin Guilfoile's opinion mix with my reaction (and then maybe I'll weigh in there with a late comment), I want to say to you Bravo! a top-notch, totally enjoyable bit of writing. thanks!"

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Tournament of Books - 2666 v. Steer Toward Rock - From the Booth - Reader Comment
On March 9, 2009 at 8:24 PM Zach Soldenstern said… [in rxn to criticism by Commentators
KEVIN GUILFOILE & JOHN WARNER]
I think I can kill a few birds with one stone here, though they may not stay dead for you. First: I'm 99.9% certain that the sex/hours thing (with the exception of the Hungarian 'horse') is a joke - the kind that gets funnier each time it's told. In this case, the exformation (the little bit that gets left out, which is why it's funny), is that this is exactly how men (particularly adolescents or grown men stuck in adolescence) want to think about sex - just as teenagers always drank 14 beers last night, or stayed up until 5 a.m. studying. And so this is how the voice, first person or third person free indirect, records it - as wish fulfillment. The same joke crops up in The Savage Detectives a lot. "She came three times." I don't think we're meant to believe, necessarily, that she came even once. I don't think we're meant to believe that the men can get beyond their own needs long enough to even care. In 2666, though, the joke deepens into tragedy, because in the third, fourth, and fifth sections (which you read, right?) we see "misogyny" (a quality of the characters, and sometimes of Bolano, but usually not of both at the same time) get played out physically, rather than merely verbally.
Bolano calls an equal amount of tension to his impossible-to-picture similes, about the foul air and what not - there are literally hundreds of them in the book, often strung together with an "or," as if the narrator knows that he's coming nowhere close to capturing what he wants to. These are, in part, a joke, too - a joke about writing, and about life - albeit a more difficult to unpack joke.
If you can appreciate Bolano's near-constant sense of humor, as slippery as Kafka's, but much more dependent on being able to distinguish narrator from author, the book is indeed fun. A lot of fun. As well as being very, very intense.
If not, not. You might see Sam Sacks' review at Open Letters the new press where Chad Post of Dalkey Archive now is right?~founded. in Rochester? monthly for an exemplary critique, albeit one that also missed the humor. But it's important to at least entertain the "it's me, it's not the book posture," because with a novel like this, mere contrarianism can be toxic. It licenses people inclined to write the book off to do so without giving themselves the chance to be proven wrong. Granted, having to read 900 pages just to be proven wrong may hold little appeal.

ok. well said. I'll back off my sense that there are no robes. or at least not robes I'd find beautiful in any way. ---but maybe I would. very well writ and usefully corrective comment.