https://genius.com/23080988/Danny-brown-tantor/Got-a-mexican-homie-named-chinese-mike

Broken up into three parts, this novel follows a similar genre-bending formula as its maximalist cousin in 2666 which also employs what I'm going to dub The Bolaño distribution which is when half your book is dominated by a singular part, alsmot begging the question of how the book was conceived in the first place, and whether supporting parts were cannibalized from other half-baked novel ideas or what.

Whereas 2666 was largely concerned with Arcimboldi (who also appears in this novel), and in particular in The Part About the Critics was a bunch of literarians concerned with lit critics, this book is poets focused on a specific poet, but with the same sort cult following. In this sense, S. is also kind of a "protagonist is out of the room but we're studying him" novel.

Part I chronicles Juan García Madero's experience with Ulises Lima and author stand-in Arturo Belano as a member of the "visceral realists" poetic circle founded by the latter two figures who run a lit mag call Lee Harvey Oswald.

Part II is a bunch of micro-vignettes from literary adjacents regarding their experiences with Belano and Lima. Man of the narrators providing their interview copy are allusions to historic Latin American figure (and the non-Latin Americans may also be allusions, I just didn't catch all of them, and most of them are Mexican/Chilean/Argentinian). It's an interesting gimmick, to center the book on Lima and Belano who we really only ever get firsthand depiction of through the lens of Juan Garcia in the surrounding parts. This middle portion is very similar to V. in that its a series of largely disjoint, meandering narrations. The piercing motif of the futility of literature, however, is ironically portrayed through the eyes of all these lit nerds who are obsessed/bothered/enamored with the two protagonists who are ostensibly anti-establishment, shunned by literary society, and nevertheless amass a following from all these otherwise self-absorbed (though not more than any of us would be) in their accounts. Lima and Belano seem whimsical and passionate –all that there followers are not– but are desperately trying to emulate via their association or criticism of the two and their movement.

Part III picks up right where Part I left off, with Juan García and his current love interest Lupe, as well as the two Viscerealists, fleeing from Lupe's pimp Alberto (who measures his member with a knife) and a cop whilst in search of Cesárea, ultimately uncoverign her schizo terrorist plot (??? if I'm not mistaken) and untimely demise in a shootout with the baddies. Reads like a short story standalone that just so happens to be preceded by a shitton of bg on the viscerealists

Lots of non-vanilla sex too.

TODO: find the chapter about michelle,

TODO: rhetorical devices from Part III

post coital sadness of the flesh and thinking about all the books miguel hadn’t read

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