Roberto Bolaño’s Distant Star was an intriguing novel. The book’s narrative style felt innovative, weaving a chilling story of political extremism, artistic ambition, fascism (though I still struggle to grasp this idea), and the destructive forces of love. Bolaño’s use of a fragmented, non-linear narrative structure created a sense of disorientation, perhaps mirroring the chaos and uncertainty of the novel’s historical and political context. At the same time, Bolaño’s character development and dialogue helped me empathize with the novel’s flawed and damaged protagonists, even as their actions became increasingly brutal.
Professor Ryan Long, during the conversation video with Professor Jon, pointed out the specialty of Bolaño’s narrative style. He stated:
“It’s really interesting that the novel sometimes uses the first person plural, you have a first person singular narrator who sometimes uses first person plural and sometimes it seems like he’s referring to himself and Bibiano kind of working together through these correspondence, but you could also imagine that it’s the first person narrator and Arturo kind of having a conversation; the novel has a really strong oral quality as if its narration were a conversation at times” (10:20 ~11:20).
This quote interested me because I didn’t perceive the narrative style to be sort of a ‘conversation’ or ‘collaboration’ until suggested by Professor Long. I’m not sure if having this insight would change my perception of the book or the credibility of the narrator, but I wonder if there would be any change in my reading experience if I were to go back to the book with this new thought.
Furthermore, one of the most striking aspects of Distant Star was the way that Bolaño used different narrators and perspectives to create a complex and multifaceted portrayal of the novel’s central character, Wieder. Initially introduced as a charismatic young poet, Wieder gradually becomes a murderer, obsessed with the coup. However, Bolaño never allowed me to see Wieder solely as a villain; instead, the readers were shown glimpses of his vulnerability, his fear, and his twisted sense of love, which made him a complex figure.
Reading this book reminded me of Roberto Bolaño’s other novel, Amulet, which I read last year in RMST 202. For a very quick context, in Amulet, the narrator is a woman who is held captive in a public bathroom during the Pinochet coup. Thinking of the two novels side to side, both novels explore the legacy of political violence and repression in Latin America, and both use innovative narrative techniques to explore themes of memory, identity, fascism, and artistic ambition. However, while Amulet felt like a more straightforwardly structured novel, Distant Star felt more fragmented and complex.
Question: Although this book is fiction, how credible was the ‘unnamed narrator’ for you? In comparison with Menchu last week, were there any narrative styles/ techniques that made the narrator of Distant star more (or less) credible?
Thank you for remembering Amuleto (the story refers to the Tlatelolco Massacre, in Mexico). It is true that both have different levels of complexity. Wieder is an eccentric and elusive character, whose materiality dissolves even at the sight of documents, on which our idea of historical objectivity is based. It seems to me that this opens the possibility of a counterpoint with the testimonio, as we said last week. How has Wieder changed over time and how has the narrator changed –after his traumatic experiences–? What is Wieder’s “truth”? With what we have in Bolaño’s text, is it possible to find it?
“in Amulet, the narrator is a woman who is held captive in a public bathroom during the Pinochet coup.”
Just a quick correction… as Daniel implies, in fact the setting of Amulet is Mexico (and the army crackdown on the student movement there). In fact, one of the main characters in Amulet is a Chilean (I think he is Arturo Belano, who may be the same Arturo B mentioned in the brief foreword to Distant Star) who is in exile after the Pinochet coup.
As Ryan and I say in our conversation, the more you read of Bolaño, the more connections you see, both of individual characters, who pop in and out of different novels, and of themes and preoccupations.
Hi Daniel! Thank you for your great post! It was cool to read your connection between this book and “Amulet”; I have never read that book, but it sounds super interesting! To answer your question, I’d like to believe that the narrator is a credible source, though as you said, it can be hard to tell when the story is based on fictional events. However, something that leads me to believe that the narrator is a credible source is that he cites his sources throughout the book, stating whether the information was something that he saw himself or information given to him by someone else. While there were some parts that he has to mainly speculate since he was not present at the event (e.g. the killings at the Garmendia twins’ house), he doesn’t really seem to ever claim that he knows the whole truth throughout the story, but instead gives his perspective and that of the people around him.
Thanks again for the great post!
Hi Daniel, I really enjoyed reading your post. I liked that you highlighted not noticing the strangeness with the narration until hearing about it afterwards, I also didn’t really notice how dynamic it was until I looked back and realized I didn’t really have much of a concept of who the protagonist of the story actually was.
Hi Daniel, really great post. I agree with you about the narrative not being like a conversation and the quote you included is really interesting. I was actually a little confused by that statement as I agree it read more like a single person observation than a contradiction or dialog between persons. Amulet sounds like a really great novel too, I’ll have to read it once classes are over as I found Bolano’s writing style very captivating.