Week 11 - Distant Star, Roberto Bolaño - Nicholas Latimer - On Curious storytelling, and Mystification


Hi all,

I will echo my peers by agreeing that this has been a very amusing read. Although by no means a light book in terms of its heavy theme, and the whirlwind of politics that were going on around the poets in this story, Bolano, or our narrator, wrote in a very digestible manner/tone. I’m someone who enjoys the more peculiar inclusion of details that authors/storytellers include - like when recounting Bergman describes Weider’s apartment as “naked and bleeding”. Although this perhaps was perhaps a slip of what was to come later in that same place. Another attempt to appreciate the structure of Bolano’s story is found in his opening of chapter 8: “This is where Abel Romero appears on the scene and I make my reappearance”. Beyond the syntax which I found fun in a way that it was unexpected - we are actively being told where we are in the storyline. This is unique from the more complex plots we’ve previously followed.

…

Beyond my liking - I want to reflect on a broader concept in the book. Blindness. Jon & Professor Long discuss the idea of uncertainty in their interview - which really made me think about the use of mystification as a reflection of the political climate as experienced by young people, specifically artists, at the time of the coup.

I thought of the hatred of free-thinking. The lack of appreciation for “art for art's sake” etc, which follows with anti-socialist ideology. This leads/has led to the imprisonment, oppression, and exile of the bright thinkers (such as those who we are initially introduced in the story). There are many times when the reader is sort of a step back from the happenings of the story - almost in the same way young onlookers to authoritarian regimes would be confused, unable to understand the greed and violence in front of them. We are withheld the name of our storyteller, and when it came time for Weider’s show, we are initially withheld the exact details of the photographs, later offered descriptions like “the photos were of poor quality, although they made an extremely vivid impression on all who say them” (98). Or near the end of the book - we are once again met with the same blurriness, when the narrator asks “Are you going to kill him?” to which we’re told: “Romero gestured in reply, but it was too dark to see what he meant” (161). 

In fact, the book even acknowledges the feelings of this sort of distrust before the climactic art show (in regards to the proceeding performance): “The foregoing account of the airshow may or may not be reliable. Or not. [...] But perhaps it happened all differently. [...] The following recount of the photographic exhibition in the flat is, however, accurate” (92). Well, where do we go from here?

Essentially what I hoped to get at, if this made any sense, was whether you also felt this mystification / confusion throughout - and what sort of purpose you drew from it.

Looking forward to discussing tomorrow!


Comments

  1. Daniel OrizagaMarch 27, 2023 at 8:57 PM

    Thanks for your post. The idea is that we can talk in class about what we have read and be able to compare notes, and perhaps clarify what we have been confused about. But sometimes it is the very intention of the text to show us that tension between what is told and what is kept silent, between hinting at what may be abject or even unspeakable, such as what may be represented or captured in those photographs. And you were right: behind an apparently simple plot there is a complex plot full of clues.

    ReplyDelete
  2. MelikaMarch 27, 2023 at 10:07 PM

    Hello Nicholas,
    Great post! I loved reading your thoughts. To respond to what you mentioned in your post, I think this mysterious aspect was intentional, just like how the narrator was kept a secret. The whole book had this mysterious vibe to it, and our mission was to solve the mysteries by figuring out who this mysterious man was and what his purpose was. Weider was also a very distant and mysterious character, relating back to the title of the text… distant star.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Week 13.1 - Fever Dream, Samanta Schweblin - Nicholas Latimer - On Titles, Familiarity, and Worms

My final reading of this class, despite the confusion and blurriness that defines this nightmare of a story, would have been my favorite reading of the semester. Perhaps not because of its amazing complexity or influence on the field, which we have seen consistently throughout the course, but because of its uniqueness. Our first psychological thriller of the year comes and goes just like the title suggests, as a fever dream,  that we wake up from wondering what the heck just happened. I actually went into the reading completely blind to the genre or back story of Scheblin’s work - so was more than shocked when met with the intense and vivid imagery that supplemented each character's experiences (from watching David burry dead animals to the way Nina would sit legs crossed always grasping her precious stuffed mole.  More about the title though, was something I found interesting, noticing the very different meanings the Spanish vs. English version seemed to offer. For example, reflec
Read more

Week 13.2 - Concluding Remarks - Nicholas Latimer - So that was Latin American Literature?

Thirteen weeks later, in conclusion, I echo my peers’ comments, saying that it is definitely a proud moment to be finishing up this course knowing how much we have covered together. From gaining a perspective of the most influential moment in Latin American literary history, to the fine grain details that have made some of the most complex, rewarding, and imaginative work many of us will ever read. From poetry, to thriller, to puzzling Borges, there certainly have been preferences - but also exposure to work I would not have sought out myself.  As Jon mentions in his concluding lecture, there was never any “right” way we were told to read or interpret a text, and this was one of the features of this course which I am sure many of us respected most. Approaching each week with a spirit of play, hoping to learn from each author but not feeling a need to learn “correctly” was a huge relief that made these difficult works so digestible. That, in combination with the extremely informative le
Read more

Week 4 - Borges, Jorge Luis. Labyrinths: Selected Stories and Other Writings - Nicholas Latimer - On the Merging of Literature and Labyrinth

Let me discuss a novel, but not just any novel. One whose narrator would “disfigure the facts and indulge in various contradictions which would permit a few readers -- very few readers -- to perceive an atrocious or banal reality…” (17). Labyrinths - as read by me - was a whirlwind of disorienting tales, told by a fantastical narrator who lived one thousand lives - and now recounts his adventures with a reflectively, philosophically, bitter taste. Unfortunately, I was not one of the ‘lucky few’ foreshadowed on page 17. At first, in ‘Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius’ I was reminded of the ‘Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy’ , whereby seemingly absurd phenomena are recounted as the mundane organization of lands far far away. It is explained: “ One of the schools of Tlön goes so far as to negate time: it reasons that the present is indefinite, that the future has no reality other than as a present hope, that the past has no reality other than as a present memory” (23) or “These small, very h
Read more