Distant Star by Roberto Bolaño is a novella about the political upheaval in Chile through Pinochet’s fascist regime with a focus on the (fictional) poets at the time. I found the formatting of the short story a little difficult to read, but it was an interesting stylistic choice. Not having the dialogue stand out from the rest of the paragraph by giving it its own lines made it hard to read. The long blocks of text were daunting and uninviting. Normally having line breaks and some white space makes reading a lot easier, but Distant Star did not want to do that. It detracted from the reading experience, but I respect the stylistic choice. It didn’t take away from the story though. Another part of the writing style that was noticeable was the lack of name for the narrator. Distant Star is based on be the last chapter of Roberto Bolaño’s Nazi Literature in the Americas, but when only looking at Distant Star, the narrator remains unnamed. There honestly really wasn’t a need for the narrator to have a name as the center of the story was Carlos Wieder.
I like how the story focused on the artists and poets during political unrest. I feel most of the time, novels and stories covering these times focus on the soldiers or the ordinary citizens of the counties at war. The story really emphasizes the role art plays in political upheaval. In regards to the question in the lecture about whether the photographs in Wieder’s exhibition were art or not, I think it’s a complicated question. The purpose of art is to tell a story and evoke an emotional response in the viewer. I think the photographs did both of those things. And unlike snuff films or disturbing films which more often than not just want to show the most gruesome or horrific scenes for no reason other than shock value, I do think Wieder had a purpose with his photographs. He wanted to expose the atrocities Pinochet’s regime were committing. It’s one thing to order someone to kill another person, it’s another to see the aftermath. And he expects the reactions of the audience, as is shown in the description that only Wieder himself showed “no sign of fatigue, with a glass of whisky in his perfectly steady hand, contemplating the dark cityscape” (93). So in my opinion, it is art, and it is effective.
Question:
How did you feel about the formatting of the novella? Did it add elements to the story that would’ve been left out had it been formatted normally?
After reading your blog post, I have one question: what do you think of the “expansion” that Bolaño makes of the story that he told before in Nazi Literature in the Americas? Although it is not exactly a stylistic choice, it is related to the “form” of the story. For Bolaño, the reading experience is very important and for this reason he takes care of every detail, I would almost say that he is obsessive. What does all this tell us about Bolaño’s own idea of art?