Wednesday, December 1, 2010

First Line of 2666's "The Part About the Crimes"

"The girl's body turned up in a vacant lot in Colonia Las Flores. She was dressed in a white long-sleeved T-shirt and a yellow knee-length skirt, a size too big."
- Roberto Bolaño, 2666, p. 353
Yes, it's not the first line of the book, but the book is just so damned long and Bolaño himself was pondering releasing each section of the book as a seperate novel just before he died. So you get the first line of a 284 page "chapter" that just blew me away. I've got some thoughts I need to put down about it, but "The Part About the Crimes" was brutally entertaining. Some of the best writing i've had the pleasure to read in a long, long time.

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