Roberto Bolaño’s novel is really interesting because of the way that he treats the main character of the novel, Alberto Ruiz-Tagle/Carlos Wieder. While the events of the story are obviously meant as symbols for the subversive, seductive and destructive actions of Carlos Wieder and the Chilean military dictatorship, Bolaño never tries to lay it on the reader that Wieder and his supporters are incredibly bad, he leaves it up to us to reach that conclusion. One of the reasons why I use the word ‘seductive’ in describing Wieder, is because of the way that Wieder portrays his outward persona to the public. As Ruiz-Tagle, Wieder is popular, intelligent and finely dressed, probably personifying everything that Arturo, Bibiano and most Chilean poets of the 20th century wished they were. As Carlos Wieder, our protagonist is still popular, intelligent, and finely dressed, but his secretly cruel and sadistic side is celebrated and rewarded by the new regime. What I think was the main ‘moral’, that Bolaño tried to get across was that, instead of dictatorships creating horrible people, it is horrible people who create dictatorships, even if their cruelty is not obvious.
To me Roberto Bolaño added various themes of how individuals react and act in the world and society that they live in. The themes that I identified in Distant Star are, grief, friendship, social amnesia, love, familial relationships, art and passion. But if I was asked what broad theme Distant Star is about, I would say that the story is about memory overall, and how we choose to interpret the events of the past retrospectively. An example of social and individual memory are, the Messerschmitt 109 that Wieder flies over the prison and the portrait of Ivan Chernyakhovsky kept by Juan Stein, what I think that Roberto Bolaño wanted to show with these, is that the effects of the Second World War and its fascist/communist divide and collective trauma still impacted the Chile of the 1970s in a lot of ways.
Overall, I enjoyed Roberto Bolaño’s novel, partially because I like reading and watching media about manipulative villains, because they make for good detective stories or psychological thrillers and I just find them personally intriguing. But I also appreciated the way that Roberto Bolaño tried to use his novel as a way to remember the people who were disappeared during Pinochet’s rule, and the struggle against tyranny and oppression and how art can be used to support or dismantle these regimes.
My discussion question for this reading is: How did you interpret the character of Carlos Wieder, were you disappointed that we never know his final fate in the novel?
As you well realized, Bolaño is a very astute novelist. The different versions of the life and work of Ruiz-Tagle / Carlos Wieder come to us from different sources, each with his own perspective. The enigma is revealed almost to the same extent that it becomes more complicated and confusing. In addition, Bolaño presents us with certain objects as memory fetishes: photographs, maps, magazines. As you wrote near the end, Bolaño makes us reflect on the remains left behind by a “desaparecido”.
Hi David 😀
I believe that a monster/serial killer like Carlos Wieder was able to use political events to satisfy his desires at that time. Wieder is a strange and creepy character, in fact, his last name is so close to weird that he just swapped the letters and added an “O” !!!! I will continue to say weirdo and recall the character.
I was not disappointed that we cannot know his ultimate fate in the book. As we discussed in class today, it was a “mystery,” and the ending may be designed to keep the audience thinking about the book for a long time!
Hi David,
Thank you for your post- was a great read!
What I found particularly interesting about Wieder is how he manages to maintain his facade while committing atrocities behind the scenes. It’s almost as if he’s playing a game with himself and his victims, seeing how far he can push the boundaries of his double life before he gets caught.
As for his fate in the novel, I think it was intentional on Bolaño’s part to leave it open-ended. By doing so, he leaves it up to the reader to decide what becomes of Wieder, whether he’s caught, continues to thrive, or meets a violent end. This ambiguity also adds to the unsettling and eerie atmosphere of the novel, where nothing is certain or straightforward.