Really mocks the whole ridiculousness/futility of the postmodern/surrealist "project" and whatever it amounted to, while still acknowledging the beauty and transformative power of literature and poetry, or at least of our ideas of them. You don't really ever get to read much of the writings of any of the writer characters, you just hear a lot about who they are and what they do, which is really more indicative of what their "movement" is all about anyway. Not on some "you can't separate the art from the artist" type shit but moreso like how you can learn a lot more about what a religion is by looking at what the practitioners actually do rather than just what their religious texts say.

This whole book can be read as encapsulating 20th century art and what it all amounted to: some sort of post-surrealist horror of meaninglessness and vacuity that's really drawn out more in 2666. In a way this is like prequel to 2666 (which I would definitely say is a better overall book though both are very addictive and readable), starts out in Mexico City, goes over to Europe and the Middle East and ends in Sonora with a sort of prediction or vision of the world to come.