So far, I think it's the melody and not the lyrics that evoke them.

In the time-honored vein of stating the obvious, most often (por no decir siempre) it's well-developed characters with whom we identify and/or for whom we feel affection who pull us into a fictional narrative. One marker of this reader's identification/affection/empathy for characters: the coincidental and perhaps repetitive listening/hearing of a new (or new to me) song will bring them to mind. I don't know why this recent gift from Pandora's box, Jarabe de Palo's "Depende", should remind me of Roberto Bolaño's four professors of German literature. I've not done and don't want to do a close enough reading of its lyrics. But because it does, it means that to me that Bolaño has developed them to perfection. He has created these wonderful characters that could become living breathing people. Might there someday be a film in the works? If so, I posit "Depende" as part of its soundtrack!

I suspected at first that I had been a bit deceptive in the election of my quarterly "fuck-off" novel because 2666 does have something to do with my work and that was one of the pulls I felt to finally unwrap it (I purchased the tome in 2005 and it's been on my shelf ever since). I was also being deceptive in that I don't think I've really wanted to choose a true "fuck-off" novel, not feeling deserving of reading something solely for pleasure. Not for a long time. Yes, I do have an unnecessarily hyper-guilty conscience...

After I'd ceremoniously removed the plastic cover of the 5-in-one novel, I got out a pencil and little colored plastic sticky page markers in case something caught my, ahem, highly analytical eye, ahem. The observaciones acertadas of the literary and cacademic worlds were not unexpected. Nor was the tone with which our author describes these worlds. I have not read much of Bolaño's work, and what I have read, I've read as a student and critic-in-training. I'm only 100 pages in, but his creations, Pelletier, Morini, Espinoza and Norton have already gotten pretty far into my reader's heart and I am thinking of them fondly.

Pencil in hand, I started the novel here in my office in the little club chair that I also reserve, ludicrously, for "reward" reading. Though tropos bolañianos abound, I took no notes, indeed I forgot to inlclude the pencil and the little sticky plastic page markers when packing for Saturday's overnight to the GenenFête. And in the hotel room in the company of these ¿fictional? academics, I didn't even feel the pull of the "Silver Bells" atmosphere below in the streets of San Francisco. Difficult also, the next morning when check-out time rolled around, to leave them and the bed (um...sorry, yes, that goes for my date as well...).

So here I have it, an unexpected and ideal "fuck-off" novel. Ideal because it has activated sentiment. It's been so long that I've read this way that the sheer joy of it took me by surprise. It may happen later, but at this point I think I'll forgo making notes or marking pages. I'll just read. Sentimentally, not analytically. The author's life and writings have inspired so many others to make it their work. Perhaps it is also some small tribute that the characters of this novel, which I'd initially regarded mostly as a work destined to be part of my studies, have inspired me to make it my pleasure. Don't let that get out.

Bolaño may or may not be rolling...