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?