The part about borders

As I've been getting at, a lot of 2666 is about experience and the borders which sequester us to and from different levels of interaction with others and entire cultures/communities. Like I said in my previous post on this subject, thus far every character in 2666 is an agent of indirect influence on that which they follow. None of them are the ones shaping that which they're after, and instead they just follow and try to interpret what is shaping them. This theme is elevated by cultural and societal borders, which Bolano paints as a thing that varies quite a bit globally.

To view this abstraction in any sort of "post" sense is fairly easy, seeing as how a comprehension of our deteriorating borders and increasingly humanitarian worldview is a prominent symptom of a postmetaphysical conception of things, and I think this is a sense in which Bolano tries to appeal to the reader and at the very least tries to convey the indetermination of the contemporary. At the most basic, Bolano presents in his novel not an antagonist in the purest sense, but instead that of human compassion, and the use of the proximity of Santa Teresa to the United States isn't entirely coincidental. Just as the European intellectuals are comfortable in the interchangeable borders of their landscape but not of others, Bolano paints the Americas as an entirely diverse and divided population, with a simple and imaginary border posing as the greatest difference between depravity and proliferation. I may express this in terms that are too simple, but the conception in the novel is entirely different. Never are the United States harped on directly for being a cold and uncaring juggernaut, but the parallel doesn't hurt in furthering what Bolano is saying.

Also in defense of the United States is Fate, the American journalist who has no knowledge of the murders prior to his arrival in Mexico but who slowly gets drawn into the culture of them. He searches as hard as any for a reason behind their happening, instead only coming up with the strange characters whose lives are interwoven into the conflict and the way they all come to terms with their hopeless knowledge of this and the way they talk about it as a result. Just as there are many different branches of journalism and how Fate has no idea how to report boxing when he gets to Mexico, there are also many ways in which humanity can and is suffering currently, and the United States can't be expected to make things just everywhere or to even know how to in so many different instances. Its not that the United States plays a larger moral role than any other country in the novel because if anything it plays a more noticeably absent one, but in terms of proximity its easiest to draw this particular comparison with. Every culture plays a different role in human conflict and their ability to reconcile any is drawn by an innumerable number of sliding scales.

I imagine the pain of cruelty across a border was one that came particularly close to Bolano, since he was a self enforced Chilean exile. A leftist figure who was a little bit moreso than the public appreciated, Bolano had left Chile after struggling to Socialize the country and bring about revolution. Spending time in Mexico and finally Europe, its not beyond reason to think that Bolano may have had a similar experience to the academics in the first part of the book, finding the ease of crossing imaginary borders a juxtaposition to the border of his native Chile. Writing this novel while he knew he was dying of liver failure, the thought that he could make himself in so many countries besides the one he was born in could have been aggravating, especially when viewed through a lens of an increasingly homogenized humanity. Though at no point do I feel the novel approaches the question, its one I find myself asking fairly regularly: What does it take to break apart the borders that disconnect us?