The English Are So Nice

Has it really been that long since I've posted anything?  I've been reading some D. H. Lawrence lately and stumbled across this poem...it's quite a nice one really.

The English Are So Nice - D.H. Lawrence 

The English are so nice
so awfully nice
they are the nicest people in the world.

And what's more, they're very nice about being nice
about your being nice as well!
If you're not nice they soon make you feel it.

Americans and French and Germans and so on
they're all very well
but they're not really nice, you know.
They're not nice in our sense of the word, are they now?

That's why one doesn't have to take them seriously.
We must be nice to them, of course,
of course, naturally.
But it doesn't really matter what you say to them,
they don't really understand
you can just say anything to them:
be nice, you know, just nice
but you must never take them seriously, they wouldn't understand,
just be nice, you know! Oh, fairly nice,
not too nice of course, they take advantage
but nice enough, just nice enough
to let them feel they're not quite as nice as they might be.

2666 and all that

I just started reading Chilean author Roberto Bolano's final novel (published 2004).  A quote prior to the start of the novel reads:

"An Oasis of Horror in a Desert of Boredom"  - Charles Baudelaire

followed by:

A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR'S HEIRS

Realizing that death might be near, Roberto left instructions for his novel 2666 to be published divided into five books corresponding to the five parts of the novel, specifying the order in which they should appear, at what intervals (one per year), and even the price to be negotiated with the publisher.  With this decision, communicated days before his death by Roberto himself to Jorge Herralde, Roberto thought he was providing for his children's future.

After his death, and following the reading and study of his work and notes by Ignacio Echevarria (a friend Roberto designated as his literary executor), another consideration of a less practical nature arose: respect for the literary value of the work, which caused us, together with Jorge Herralde, to reverse Roberto's decision and publish 2666 first in full, in a single volume, as he would have done had his illness not taken the gravest course.

I was completely swept into the story reading the first section, The Part About The Critics, about four literary critics devoted to the point of obsession to the works of a German author named Archimboldi.  While we never know what kind of novels Archimboldi writes, the four critics discuss him constantly, although he seems to have disappeared.  The four critics, three males and a female meet a conference meet at a conference on contemporary German Literature in 1994 and most of the action (or non action) takes place during that decade, as the four of them continue to meet and bond at future conferences.  The three males are an Italian, a Frenchman, and a Spaniard, and the woman is English.  Two of the men are also translators. 

All kinds of characters appear during the story for a few pages and we don't encounter them again, and sometimes entire dreams are described in detail.  Other characters ramble for a few pages and then confess they don't have any idea what they are talking about.

"...The intellectuals retire for the night.  The moon is fat and the night air is so pure it seems edible.  Songs can be heard in some bars, the notes reaching the street.  Sometimes an intellectual wanders off course and goes into one of these places and drinks mezcal.  Then he thinks whart would happen if one day he.  But no.  He doesn't think anything.  He just drinks and sings.  Sometimes he thinks he sees a legendary German writer.  But all he's really seen is a shadow, sometimes all he's seen is his own shadow, which comes home every night so that the intellectual won't burst or hang himself from the lintel.  But he swears he's seen a German writer and his own happiness, his sense of order his bustle, his spitit of revelry rest on that conviction.  The next morning it's nice out.  The sun shoots sparks but doesn't burn.  A person can go out reasonably relaxed, with his shadow on his heels, and stop in a park and read a few pages of Valery.  and so on until the end."

"I don't understand a word you've said," said Norton.

"Really I've just been talking nonsense," said Amalfitano.

But it seems that someone has seen Archimboldi in Mexico and our critics go to Mexico in search of him...

The plot thickens...