[Peeping Tom]

Distant Star is one of three Bolaño English language books that I haven’t read yet. The other two are The Romantic Dog (poetry) and Last Evenings on Earth (which is on order).

What strikes me about the description of the novel (by Daniel and Shaunrandol, and others) is that one element of the story (the prison and the sky writing poet) also appears in Nazi Literature in the Americas. This isn’t unusual for Bolaño. For instance, there is a rendition of the story of Auxilio Lacouture, the mother of Mexican poetry, from Amulet that appears in the middle section of The Savage Detectives, as does the story of the campground night watchman from The Skating Rink. That recurring elements appear again and again throughout his body of work, indicates a mind that is constantly exploring different possibilities of the same story. Nothing is ever final.

Haruki Murakami is another writer who does this. The Wind-up Bird Chronicle started as a short story “The Wind-up Bird and Tuesday’s Women” in The Elephant Vanishes. Murakami said when he first wrote that short story, he felt, at the time, there was much more he could do with it. Later, he revisited that short story and turned it into a novel. He said, in essence, he doesn’t believe that a story is finished just because it’s published.

As far as mentioning names of Latin American (and other) writers (real and invented, well-known and unknown), that was one of the reasons why I was so attracted to The Savage Detectives, the first Bolaño novel I ever read. For some reason, I thought that was rather daring. I’ve been hooked ever since.