Posting this a little bit early since it's just the intro. Time to start reading.

>“An oasis of horror in a desert of boredom.” - Charles Baudelaire

Introduction

Welcome to the 2026 2666 Read-Along. This is just a last call to get the book if you have not already and a reminder to start reading sometime soon. The first few weeks are on the slower side so even if you haven't been able to get the book, hopefully there will be time to catch up.

A few things to know going into 2666:

It is an unfinished book. I believe how unfinished is up for debate, but Bolaño had at least hoped to revise it but died of liver failure in 2003 before he could. He was 50 years old. His friends and relatives published it posthumously and there's some inconsistencies in how the book is structured (one book, 5 parts) vs what Bolaño supposedly wanted (5 books). You'll get more from the Spanish wikipedia page on this.

Born in Chile, he spent his young adulthood between South America and Mexico before moving to Europe where he would die. He had a colorful life (though perhaps less colorful than he claimed) that included working as a journalist, left wing activism, accusations of terrorism, supposed heroin addiction, and poetry.

Bolaño hated magical realism and was known during his lifetime for attacking his fellow Latin American writers. So if you were expecting levitating women, probably(?) not.

The first part is supposedly kind of boring. I say this not to discourage anyone from reading, but to encourage you to push past it if you find yourself doubting the hype the first couple of weeks.

And speaking of slogs, The Part About the Crimes is supposed to be brutal both in terms of length and content (hundreds of pages describing murdered women). I know it's a red scare sub and we all hate trigger warnings, but given some of the hesitancy we've seen already, I feel like it needs to be said. We can trade coping mechanisms as we get closer.

No one knows what the number 2666 means. Maybe a spoiler, but let's get it out of the way. It may be a reference to his novella Amulet:

>Then we walked down the Avenida Guerrero; they weren’t stepping so lightly any more, and I wasn’t feeling too enthusiastic either. Guerrero, at that time of night, is more like a cemetery than an avenue, not a cemetery in 1974 or in 1968, or 1975, but a cemetery in the year 2666, a forgotten cemetery under the eyelid of a corpse or an unborn child, bathed in the dispassionate fluids of an eye that tried so hard to forget one particular thing that it ended up forgetting everything else.

A few things to know going into the read-along:

This is part of the RSBC Leviathan series that started with Infinite Jest and has included Anna Karenina, Moby Dick, and Gravity's Rainbow. The idea is to help posters get through long and difficult books together so we can enrich our lives, strengthen our minds, collect our bragging rights, etc.

I have never read the book before and have only read one Bolaño book (Savage Detectives), so I don't really function in these read-alongs as an expert or guide, I'm just good at posting reliably and roughly on time. If you have read the book before, even if you're not re-reading with us, please chime in. These kinds of comments from experienced readers were an immense help during the Moby Dick and Gravity's Rainbow read-alongs.

If you have read the book before or are reading ahead, please avoid spoilers. I'll provide a summary each week of what we've covered.

While lurking is fine (I'm a wallflower myself), I encourage everyone to join in the comments from week to week, even if it's just to check in. Please respond to other comments you find interesting even if it's just to say they're interesting. This is a collaborative effort and it helps even just to know you're following along, even if you feel like you don't have anything substantial to say (which is ok! half my comments for the Infinite Jest read-along were just announcing I had read the assigned pages).

__________________________________________________

Prompts

These are just suggestions for things to talk about in the comments. Answer as many or as few as you want. You can also post your own prompts in the comments for others to answer; this holds true for the entire read-along.

• Feel free to use the comments to introduce yourself. There was some interest in video chats expressed in the announcement thread. I don't want to participate in that myself, but you can use the comments to organize discord servers or zoom meetings or whatever else people use these days.
• Have you read the book before? Have you read anything else by Bolaño?
• What draws you to 2666? What are you expecting to get out of it? Are you going into it with any preconceived notions?
• What edition are you reading? Are you reading it in English or the original Spanish or another language entirely?
• I can't post images in the main post, but if I'm able, I'll post some of the cover art in the comments. What cover art is on your edition and what does it lead you to expect about the book?
• What do you think the title 2666 evokes?

__________________________________________________

Schedule

Note: In order to make sure the page numbers of the most common edition aligned with my own, I went to two different Barnes and Nobles that said they had 2666 in stock and neither had it on the shelf, so I'm just going by my three volume FSG edition and I'm never going to Barnes and Noble again. If you have a different edition, please make sure you find the stopping point. Everything should be on a line break, if not the end of a part.

The Part About the Critics (2 weeks)

• August 10: Pages 1-80, through "they probably would have killed him."
• August 17: Pages 80-163, through the end of "The Part About the Critics."

The Part About Amalfitano (1 week)

• August 24: Pages 163-231, the entirety of "The Part About Amalfitano."

The Part About Fate (1 week)

• August 31: Pages 231-353, the entirety of "The Part About Fate."

The Part About the Crimes (3 weeks)

• September 7: Pages 353-449, The Part About the Crimes begins, through "coming down the hallway."
• September 14: Pages 449-545, through "according to witnesses, was indescribable."
• September 21: Pages 545-637, through the end of "The Part about the Crimes."

The Part About Archimboldi (2 weeks)

• September 28: Pages 637-770, through "Then he remembered who she was."
• October 5: Pages 770-898, through the end of "The Part about Archimboldi"

__________________________________________________

I look forward to seeing everyone for our first actual book discussion post next week.

    .    _    +     .  ______   .          .
 (      /|\      .    |      \      .   +
     . |||||     _    | |   | | ||         .
.      |||||    | |  _| | | | |_||    .
   /\  ||||| .  | | |   | |      |       .
__||||_|||||____| |_|_____________\__________
. |||| |||||  /\   _____      _____  .   .
  |||| ||||| ||||   .   .  .         ________
 . \|`-'|||| ||||    __________       .    .
    \__ |||| ||||      .          .     .
 __    ||||`-'|||  .       .    __________
.    . |||| ___/  ___________             .
   . _ ||||| . _               .   _________
_   ___|||||__  _ \\--//    .          _
     _ `---'    .)=\oo|=(.   _   .   .    .
_  ^      .  -    . \.|