Roberto Bolaño: Distant Star

[Daniel del Real]

This is the second novel from Bolaño I've ever read (The Savage Detectives being the first one) and by now I can tell two things: How immense is Bolaño's contribution to the post-boom Latin American literature and the huge sorrow I felt after finishing the book for losing this absolutely talented writer so soon.

In this short novel (152 pp in my edition) I can clearly see some tendencies that apparently Bolaño repeats in his novels, or at least he has in the two previous I've read.

The first one is the existance of literary groups, mainly formed by young poets who are trying to create a literary movement that changes the actual overview of how poetry is made.

The second is the characters who always have wandering personalities, due to exile or different circumstances, just like Bolaño himself.

The third one, and one of the main topics of the acclaimed novel 2666, the appearance of mysterious writers, who after making an important contribution to local literature disappear, being almost impossible to hear from them again. This is the case of Cecilia Tinajero in the Savage Detectives and Carlos Wieder in Distant Star.

He is introduced in the story as Alberto Ruiz-Tagle a good looking young man who is in a poetry group along with the narrator, his best friend and two beautiful sisters from whom the narrator is in love.

Carlos Wieder which is the real name of Ruiz-Tagle is a former army pilot, who later is hired to write poetry in the sky using his airplane and the smoke coming out of it. He gains notoriety this way and becomes even more popular.

After this, the sisters are murdered and little by little the narrator and his friends starts to suspect of Wieder. After a photograph exposition organized by Wieder, a spine chilling event takes place and Wieder has no option but to disappear.

His clues are followed from Mexico to Spain and many other places.

The rest of the novel is the story if Carlos Wieder a mystery man, an amazing poet, a sky writer and a possible murder; a character that only Bolaño can create with such majesty and realism.

Another excellent novel that reaffirms Roberto Bolaño as the best writer in Spanish language in the last 20 years.

[shaunrandol]

I politely disagree with your final assessment. I found Distant Star to be less than excellent...

Here's a quick review originally published on The Mantle:

A “true masterpiece” said Vanguardia about this novel. It must be the case that Vanguardia doesn’t get out to the bookstores that often, because for me Distant Staris consistently less than stellar. It is not an entire disaster: the story is book-ended by twenty exciting pages on either side. But for the most part, the middle of the book sagged under its own boring weight. Many of the sentences just zipped past my eyes, like cockroaches skittering across dirty floors. I know what I saw, but couldn’t tell you what I read. Many pages acted as an excuse, it seems, for the author to list his favorite, obscure and/or radical Latin American authors (and their equally obscure publications). As such, Distant Star is probably read best as a sort of Cliffs Notes for the writers and poets influencing Bolaño’s thinking and writing styles. Surely Savage Detectives and 2666 must be better.


Distant Star revolves around the search for Carlos Wieder, a poet who in the 1970s is shaking up the world of literature and poetry in Chile—by writing enigmatic poems in the sky with smoke he has taken the public’s imagination. The poets of the day do not agree on the importance of Wieder’s contributions: “But these associates knew nothing about poetry. Or so they thought. (Naturally Wieder disagreed, assuring them they knew more about poetry than most people, more than a good many poets and professors, at any rate, living in their oases or miserable immaculate deserts; but his thugs didn’t understand, or dismissed it good-humoredly as another one of the lieutenant’s jokes.) For them that Wieder did in his place was just a ‘daring feat,’ daring in more ways than one, but not poetry.”


This passage reminds me of a profile recently in the New Yorker of the French Spider Man Alain Robert who free-climbs skyscrapers to garner attention for one cause or another. Some of those interviewed for the profile called Robert a glory hog, and because he chose to conquer steel and glass, not a “real climber.” Others claim the man is just plain awesome. The same happens for Wieder’s contribution to Latin American poetry. To some he is an amateur, a circus act. Others find him to be refreshing and a godsend.


A couple of pages later I came across the most beautiful statement in the story. Wieder had just finished sky writing a poem in Latin. The narrator is speaking about a translator’s take on the deed: “Because Latin makes more of an impression in the sky, although in fact he probably used the word ‘impact,’ Latin makes more of an impact in the sky…”


Think about that for a moment… while the differences in definitions of impact and impression are important to the point being made, the idea that we can impact or impress against an entity which has not the least bit of body—air, the sky—is poetic in itself.

original posting: Quick review: Roberto Bolano's "Distant Star" | The Mantle

[Daniel del Real]

Originally Posted by shaunrandol

But for the most part, the middle of the book sagged under its own boring weight. Many of the sentences just zipped past my eyes, like cockroaches skittering across dirty floors. I know what I saw, but couldn’t tell you what I read. Many pages acted as an excuse, it seems, for the author to list his favorite, obscure and/or radical Latin American authors (and their equally obscure publications). As such, Distant Star is probably read best as a sort of Cliffs Notes for the writers and poets influencing Bolaño’s thinking and writing styles. Surely Savage Detectives and 2666 must be better.

By this text is evident you don't know Bolaño at all. If you read Savage Detectives and Nazi Literature in Americas you will check that a basis of his style is to be quoting or inventig names from the Latin American literature overview. This mix of reality and fiction is what drives through the border of Bolaño's creations. The atmosphere is created this way and it is a fundamental part in the structure of almost any work by Roberto Bolaño.

[LRiley]

I've read everything so far that has come out in English translation of Bolano--except the recently released Monsieur Pain.

For me anyway The Savage Detectives and 2666 are both masterpieces and his shorter fictions though almost always excellent fall a step or two below. Having said that one of the more intriguing things about Distant Star is that without a doubt it's the most explicit commentary in fictional form that Bolano has made referencing the brutality of Pinochet's dictatorship and more than worthwhile just for that.

[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.

[Daniel del Real]

Originally Posted by Peeping Tom

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.

Haruki Murakami is another writer who does this.

Indeed, the last part of Nazi Literature in the Americas is the base for the novel Distant Star. I read first Distant Star, so when I read that last part it was a little disappointing to know what it was going to happen, however it was a nice exercise to see where the idea came and how he fully developed it to a novel.

Murakami does that a lot. Two of his novels, Sputnik Sweetheart and Tokyo Blues, are based on two short stories (don't remember their names) that were published in Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman.

Coincidently Bolaño and Murakami are both, two of my favorite contemporanean writers.

[Johan]

Originally Posted by Daniel del Real

Indeed, the last part of Nazi Literature in the Americas is the base for the novel Distant Star. I read first Distant Star, so when I read that last part it was a little disappointing to know what it was going to happen, however it was a nice exercise to see where the idea came and how he fully developed it to a novel.

Murakami does that a lot. Two of his novels, Sputnik Sweetheart and Tokyo Blues, are based on two short stories (don't remember their names) that were published in Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman.

Coincidently Bolaño and Murakami are both, two of my favorite contemporanean writers.

Also note that in the foreword he claims that the book was written with the aid of "Arturo B, who tried to get himself killed in Africa" and "the ghost of Pierre Menard", obviously referencing The Savage Detectives and Borges.

As for the book itself, it's no 2666 but still very good.

[DB Cooper]

For me 2666 and The Savage Detectives are amazing books that I will dip into again and again. However the shorter Bolano works Ive read do seem to fall a step below those two, which is nothing to be ashamed about. I havent made my way through all of them yet though. As much as I want to tear through all the Bolano I can get my paws on, I try to save some for later reading. I have yet to get By Night In Chile, Amulet, Last Evenings On Earth, and the forthcoming Monsieur Pain. Is the Third Reich coming out in '10?