Espinoza and Pelletier in the last third of the first book are essentially reliving the prostitution days of the second third, but they're settling down and being more domestic. Dreams and duality continue to be important. Water seems to be increasingly important (as seen in dreams, most recently one Pelletier had shortly after Norton learned that Johns had fallen to his death in the water). Norton's fear about being a street person taken advantage of and hurt/killed by other street people compared to the killings in Santa Teresa. More language/nationality crossover. The weird vision Norton has of Morini during the storm wherein she sees his wheelchair facing her and him, standing, facing away from her (when he is in fact in another room asleep); how this ties into his dream of her in the first third of the book and Morini's thought that "Nothing is ...

• daryl
• January 19, 2009
• 2666 - 3-Volume Boxed Set
• Reply

Just got through the dustbowl/grasshopper/Uncle Balt section, and it was breathtaking. In much of the book so far, there's so little linear narrative that the words themselves really shine; here both the writing and the narrative are gorgeous. More than with most books, I can hear my brain enunciating the words in this one. It's like a big long poetry slam in my head.

• daryl
• January 8, 2009
• The Tunnel
• Reply

This is a hard book, but I can tell it's big and is going to be good. I think it's the kind of thing you probably have to read a few times to get a whole lot out of. It's hard for me to read it for more than about an hour at a sitting because it's so tangential and streamy (though the tangents are clearly going to interweave somewhat as this thing goes on).

• daryl
• January 1, 2009
• The Tunnel
• Reply