I just finished Roberto Bolaño’s 2666. Five parts of literature and violence.

Everyone talks about the fourth part — three hundred pages of horror. For me, it’s the best one. The most honest. If anything, parts two and three feel almost unnecessary; the novel would be stronger if it were made up only of the first, fourth, and fifth parts.

2666 sits somewhere between Cortázar and Pavić for me — literature as an existential experience rather than a story. The novel offers no catharsis and no answers. Evil here isn’t a puzzle to be solved, but the very structure of reality — its default setting.

Black humor and a constant undercurrent of mild absurdity make the book unexpectedly easy to read, even when it deals with things most people instinctively turn away from. Bolaño understands that you can’t stare into darkness for 1,000 pages straight. Absurdity is what gives you air.

This isn’t “required reading.”

But if you want to understand why literature exists in a world where it changes nothing — this is it.