2666 – Week 2

It’s a Wise Reader Who Knows his Badulaques

Another fifty pages in, and I am almost as lost as the legendary Archimboldi. As the story meanders through the love triangle of Espinoza, Pelletier and Liz Norton, Archimboldi becomes less central, although the efforts of the four critics have, in the meantime, created a huge academic interest in his oeuvre. Ironically, the almost contrived nature of the Archimboldian studies has also directed the lives of his ‘apostles.’

‘Espinoza was late. Life is shit, thought Pelletier in astonishment, all of it. And then: if we hadn’t teamed up, she would be mine now. And then: if there hadn’t been mutual understanding and friendship and affinity and alliance, she would be mine now. And a little later: if there hadn’t been anything, I wouldn’t even have met her. And: I might have met her, since each of us has an independent interest in Archimboldi that doesn’t spring from our mutual friendship. And: it’s possible, too, that she might have hated me, found me pedantic, cold, arrogant, narcissistic, an intellectual elitist.’