A recent exchange in the com­ments over at Ads With­out Prod­ucts offers an inter­est­ing sug­ges­tion for clos­ing the Roberto Bolaño-Roberto Bazlen-​Robert Musil loop that John Latta started and I con­tin­ued. (Advance apolo­gies if crib­bing com­ments like this is poor form):

Scott Eric Kauf­man:

I’ve got to say, I’m think­ing the way a person reacts to Bolaño’s directly tied to their feel­ings about Musil…

CR:

Yes! I’ve never been able to get past, you know, the first sev­eral thou­sand pages of Musil - you must be right!…

SEK:

Less cryp­ti­cally, Bolaño’s novels seem to have that (admit­tedly con­tra­dic­tory) qual­ity of being both a page-​turner and occa­sional. I’m not com­pelled to read them, but when I do, I can’t put them down. Musil was the same way—his pale shadow, Kun­dera, not so much—but this seems to exclude Musil and Bolaño both from the mod­ernist cat­e­gory into which they’re so often shoved….

And yet as soon as I offer the sug­ges­tion, I feel myself want­ing to draw it back.