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Summer camp, business trips, weddings, moving a child from Tennessee into Illinois, productions of 1776, and two days of skate punk made the months of June and July too busy for all three cast members to commit to a regular recording schedule. With nothing else to fill a programming void, Rodney sat down without his castmates and had a fascinating conversation with an author local to the Rockford area. Unfortunately, Rodney did not know how to use Zoom, which means that conversation never got recorded. Thankfully, the subject of his interview was unfazed enough to come back on another day and be interviewed for a second time. This time, Rodney was armed with instructions from Aaron on how to, you know, push the button that says “record.”

Rodney’s interview is with a man named Andrew Mertzenich. Native to the Rockford area, Andrew is a practicing lawyer, an accomplished musician, the co-chair of the Rockford Area Pride Committee, founder of the city’s annual Pride parade, and now a published author. His book — entitled Forest City Yester-Queer — is a meticulously-researched chronicle of the LGBTQIA+ community in the Rockford, Illinois area. His stories are fascinating. He is also incredibly patient to record the same interview twice. That last sentence there is one final dig at Rodney. Unnecessary, yes, but we can’t help ourselves.

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After years of writing poetry, Chilean author Roberto Bolaño made the decision to secure more financial security for his family by making the transition into scribing novels. His first novel, La pista de hielo (The Skating Rink), was published in 1993. His breakthrough, Los detectives salvajes (The Savage Detectives), came about in 1998.

Unbeknownst to the public and his ever-growing fanbase, in 1992 Bolaño had been diagnosed with a terminal liver ailment, kickstarting a frenetic writing pace. Spurred in large part by a looming awareness of his impending death, he published at least one new book every year until his death in 2003.

Although he was, by this point, a well-known and critically-hailed author in Spanish-speaking countries, Bolaño was not widely translated until after his death. That changed with the posthumous publication of his magnum opus, 2666, in 2005. This massive novel, divided into five loosely-connected sections, secured his worldwide literary reputation. Since his death, all of his earlier works have been translated into English and there have been four additional posthumous works released.

Rebecca handpicked 2666 as her selection for the month of July. Yes, the discussion isn’t being posted until August, but everyone is still playing catch-up from a summer that has gotten out of control. Besides, posting late gave Rodney an opportunity to savor and digest this most post-modern of novels. Y’all know how he struggles with those.

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The folks here at Just In Case We Die have decided that all a novelist has to do to earn a spot on the list of 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die is to pen a book about identity chasing. From On the Road (which Aaron adores) to Disappearance (which all but Rodney found boring), there have been many spotlighted novels that cover this theme. This novel, one that the cast was somewhat interested in based solely on the writer being from India, is one of the blandest novels they’ve ever had to discuss. Literally nothing happens save some not-very-subtle character introductions and drab postulating about whether ’tis better to embrace a new India or the encroachment of the Western world. This time around, there’s not even an interesting history to share about the novelist.