“Madness Is Contagious”: Language and Violence in the Goodman Theatre’s 2666

A marathon adaptation of Roberto Bolaño’s epic novel 2666 at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre revealed how the act of artistic creation has become implicated in the global machinery of political violence. Repeated throughout the five-hour play, the refrain “madness is contagious” seems to permeate 2666 like the stench of a body left to decompose on the side of a road.