Estrella distante

Estrella distante (2008 libro de bolsillo)
por Roberto Bolaño
España, 1996
ISBN 978-84-339-6673-5

Estrella distante abre con una cita enigmática de Faulkner ("Qué estrella cae sin que nadie la mire?") antes de involucrarnos en una breve pero impactante meditación sobre el destino de algunos poetas chilenos después del golpe militar en 1973. Aunque la imagen de la estrella distante claramente evoca memorias de la bandera del país, esta visión de la inocencia perdida también llama la atención a la victoria del mal en la época. "Me parece que estamos entrando en el campeonato mundial de la fealdad y la brutalidad", dice el protagonista (p. 27); poco después, éste se cae preso y sus amigos empiezan desaparecer. Supuestamente narrado por un tal Arturo Belano (el alter-ego ficticio de Bolaño y un personaje que también aparece en Los detectives salvajes) a los mediados de los noventa al exilio en Cataluña, el argumento o, mejor dicho, el testimonio traumatizado de esta obra tiene que ver con la búsqueda de un hombre conocido como Alberto Ruiz-Tagle o Carlos Wieder. Sin querer revelar demasiado acerca de la intriga, resulta que el misterioso Ruiz-Tagle era un derechista infiltrado en los talleres literarios en la presidencia de Allende, vigilando a los izquierdistas y a los otros "sospechosos" entre los grupos intelectuales de aquel entonces. Después del golpe, Wieder se reveleba ser un oficial en la Fuerza Aéra Chilena, un piloto/poeta que dejara poemas escritos en humo en el cielo, un asesino en serie patrocinado por el estado, y un fotógrafo de sus víctimas. De un lado, el símbolo por excelencia de "la nueva poesía chilena" escrita en sangre. De otro lado, un prófugo de la justicia a causa de su estética del genocidio como arte. Mientras que sigo leyendo el grueso 2666 de Bolaño con gran placer, estoy contento decirles que Estrella distante es el tercer libro suyo que me parece una obra maestra total. Nota: 5 estrellas (distantes) a escala de 5 estrellas (distantes).

*****

Distant Star opens with a cryptic Faulkner quote ("What star falls unseen?") before involving us in a brief but devastating reflection on the fate of a handful of Chilean poets after the military coup there in 1973. Although the image of the distant star clearly evokes memories of the star in the country's flag, this vision of innocence lost also calls attention to the victory of evil in that specific time and place. "It seems to me that we are entering into the world championship of ugliness and brutality," says the protagonist (p. 27); shortly afterward, he becomes a political prisoner and his friends begin to disappear. Supposedly narrated by one Arturo Belano (Bolaño's fictional alter ego and a character who also appears in The Savage Detectives) in the middle of the '90s while in exile in Catalonia, the plot--or better yet--the traumatized testimony offered by this work has to do with the search for a man variously known as Alberto Ruiz-Tagle or Carlos Wieder. Without wanting to reveal too much about the intrigue, it turns out that the mysterious Ruiz-Tagle was a right-wing infiltrator in the literary workshops of Allende's presidency during the democracy, spying on the leftists and the other "suspicious people" among the intellectual groups of the time. After the coup, Wieder was revealed to be an officer in the Chilean Air Force, a pilot/poet who would leave poems written in smoke in the air, a serial killer sponsored by the state, and a photographer of his victims. On the one hand, the symbol par excellence of "the New Chilean Poetry" written in blood. On the other, a fugitive from justice on account of his genocide-as-art aesthetic. While I continue reading Bolaño's thick 2666 with great pleasure, I'm happy to note that Distant Star is the third book of his that seems like a complete masterpiece to me. Rating: 5 out of 5 (distant) stars.

Estrella Distante en español: (http://www.anagrama-ed.es/); Distant Star in English (http://www.ndpublishing.com/).

Roberto Bolaño

Dom Casmurro

Dom Casmurro (1997 hardback)
by Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
Brazil, 1899
ISBN 0-19-51038-4

"I turned to face her; Capitu had her eyes on the ground. She soon lifted them, slowly, and we stood there looking at one another... Childhood confession, I could give two or three pages over to you, but I must be economical. The truth is, we said nothing; the wall said it all for us. We did not move, but our hands stretched out little by little, all four of them, taking hold of each other, clasping each other, melting into one another. I didn't take down the exact time of the gesture. I should have done so; I regret not having a note written that same night, which I could reproduce here with all its spelling mistakes: though it would have none, such was the difference between the scholar and the adolescent. I knew all the rules of orthography, but had no suspicion of the rules of love; I had gone through orgies of Latin and was a virgin with women.

We did not unclasp our hands, nor did they drop of their own accord, out of weariness or inattention. Our eyes stared into one another, then looked away, strayed for a while, then came back to each other again... A future priest, I faced her as before an altar: one of her cheeks was the Epistle and the other the Gospel. Her mouth might have been the chalice, her lips the paten. All I needed was to say a new mass, according to a Latin that no one learns at school, and is the catholic language of mankind. Don't think me sacrilegious, devout lady reader; the purity of the intention cleanses anything unorthodox in the style. We stood there with heaven within us. Our hands, their nerve ends touching, made two creatures one: a single, seraphic being. Our eyes went on saying infinite things, and the words did not even try to pass our lips: they went back to the heart as silently as they had come..." (Machado de Assis, 28-29)

While Brazilian culture's never had the death-grip on my imagination that fiction and films from France, Italy, and the Spanish-speaking world have lorded over me for years, Dom Casmurro went a long ways toward changing that during the brief amount of time I was lost in its pages. A worthy rival to Lampedusa's The Leopard for the best fictional non-fiction I've come across this year, this slyly chatty novel poses as the giddy first-person account of Rio de Janeiro native Bento Santiago's 1857 schoolboy romance with his beautiful neighbor Capitu Pádua, told some forty years after the fact when one lover's jealousy and a series of unkind surprises from life for both have taken their inevitable toll on the couple's first moments of teenage happiness.

Bento's no 19th-century pícaro to be sure, but he's just as disarming and witty a narrator as our old friend Lazarillo de Tormes. Always fussing over the sequence of events in his manuscript and worrying about how the reader will react to his telling of the story of the first love of his heart, he cuts a very charming, convincing and credible figure as a memoirist even as doubts begin to surface about the reliability of his judgement and memory. In addition, he's surrounded by a well-drawn cast of characters prone to making grand statements about life being like an opera ("God is the poet, the music is by Satan, [and the] special theater, this planet" [18-19])--not bad for a consciously "literary" romance set in a land wracked by fever epidemics, floods, leprosy and slavery, no? A great read.

• Machado de Assis, Joaquim Maria. Dom Casmurro (translated by John Gledson). New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.

Machado de Assis

Book around the World Challenge

Dear Readers:

Book around the World is another reading challenge sponsored by Bonnie Jacobs. In her introduction to this one, Bonnie notes that "The world has many countries, some big and some small, and I want to find the best books about each country. The book should help us learn something ABOUT that country and not just be one written by somebody who lives there. Let's 'book around the world' and find at least one excellent book for each country in the world."

While I think this is another cool idea, I definitely won't be in any hurry to complete it given the massive number of countries involved and other reading plans I have in place (at least in my mind!). Thankfully, there is no time frame to consider. José Saramago's 1989 The History of the Siege of Lisbon for Portugal is the nearest "sure thing" I have to a country choice at this point; however, other ideas and review links will show up below. For more info on joining the challenge, click here for instructions.

*****

• Brazil: Machado de Assis, Dom Casmurro (review)
• Chile: Roberto Bolaño, Estrella distante [Distant Star] (review)