Blogging Bolaño 2666 6/25/08

Finished up section 1 ‘The Part About the Critics’ today and made it through section 2 ‘The Part About Amalfitano’. Amalfitano is a philosophy professor who is introduced in section 1 when the professor’s travel to Sonora in search of the elusive German author Benno von Archimboldi. Amalfitano is a Chilean of Italian descent who ends up teaching in México after leaving a position in Spain after his wife leaves him to go visit a poet living in an asylum. This mirrors an incident in section 1 where the European professors go to a Swiss asylum to visit a famous painter who has mutilated himself. Professor Amalfitano is in the midst of a nervous breakdown and almost oblivious to the troubling series of unsolved murders of young women that plague the border town of Santa Teresa and our upsetting many residents. He is hearing voices, has some strange run-ins with the son of the philosophy department dean and the section ends with him dreaming about chatting with Boris Yeltsin. Strangely enough, this all makes sense.