About this title: An unnamed narrator attempts to piece together the life and works of an enigmatic would-be poet turned military assassin during Pinochet's regime in Chile. In the early 1970s Alberto Ruiz-Tagle was a little-known poet living in southern Chile. After the military coup of 1973 that brought in the dictatorship of General Pinochet, he embarked upon a ...
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Binding: Softcover
Publisher: New Directions
Date Published: 2004-12-30
ISBN-13:9780811215862ISBN:0811215865
Description: NEW. Softcover. From an inventory that is 100% brand-new, 100% direct from the publishers' distribution channel. We carry NO pre-owned, NO remaindered. We pack in CARDBOARD to ensure the pristine quality is maintained. (Bubble-wrap alone is NOT sufficient to protect from USPS equipment. ) Guaranteed brand-NEW, protected with CARDBOARD, your satisfaction is guaranteed. BKLUVID: 9780811215862. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corpor
Date Published: 2004
ISBN-13:9780811215862ISBN:0811215865
Description: New. Brand New! Buy with confidence-your satisfaction is guaranteed at B-Logistics! Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. Please note that Expedited shipping is not available at this time. read more
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation
Date Published: 2004
ISBN-13:9780811215862ISBN:0811215865
Description: Very good. No dust jacket as issued. Clean, unmarked, tight and square; text clean and bright, no writing. Near fine. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 149 p. Audience: General/trade. read more
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation
Date Published: 2004
ISBN-13:9780811215862ISBN:0811215865
Description: Very good. No dust jacket as issued. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 149 p. Audience: General/trade. Nice condition; great moving reading! ** read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Vintage
Date Published: 2009
ISBN-13:9780099461722ISBN:0099461722
Description: New. Attempts to piece together the life and works of an enigmatic would-be poet turned military assassin during Pinochet's regime in Chile. This book narrates the story of Alberto Ruiz-Tagle-a little-known poet living in southern Chile who subsequently... read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc
Date Published: 2004
ISBN-13:9780811215862ISBN:0811215865
Description: The star in this hair-raising novel is Alberto Ruiz-Tagle, an Air Force pilot who exploits the 1973 coup in Chile to launch his own version of the New Chilean Poetry, a multimedia enterprise that symbolizes the darkness of Pinochet's regime. read more
Description: Like New. SHIPS FROM GERMANY. NO EXPEDITED SHIPPING! Allow 10-14 business days for delivery. Please always check the language in the product description section. Few left in stock-order soon. Selling online since 1995. Code: L20091120203155I. read more
Description: New. PLEASE NOTE: All books are promptly imported from the UK using International Priority Airmail. Delivery is typically 5-10 working days. Please do not select expedited shipping. Heavier and more expensive items have tracking number. Professional and reliable bookseller (est.1987). read more
Description: New. Please note that deliveries to addresses in the UK and Europe will be in 4-14 business days. Other countries should refer to Alibris standard times. ISBN10: 0099461722. read more
"This ended up being a great, short novel, even though the writing is not as good as 'The Savage Detectives' or '2666'.
Bolaño is famous for leaving you hanging at the end, but this book wraps up relatively neatly. The implications of the book are not clear. Bolaño is obviously opposed to Pinochet, but there is no straight forward ethical argument here about art and dictatorship (the fascist poet is eventually tossed aside by the dictatorship as well)."
"This incredible book gets pretty conventional in its last 30 pages -- but the first 120 pages are fantastic (even thrilling). I read somewhere that Bolaño really wanted to be a homicide detective, not a novelist, and it seems that way -- he's just enough of a pig/prude/moralist that one or two of his plot twists are kind of "Dark Knight"-ish. But when his plot is evolving, not twisting, it's up there with Borges and shares a political mindset with Dorfman. (It's kind of Stanislaw Lem-like, too.)"
"In Distant Star the idea that artists with their art present a serious challenge to oppressive authority is dismissed as a myth; those that would purify their life by living as a creative might pause a moment to absorb this lesson. Much of the humor on the show 30 Rock is derived from the comedic friction generated by the lifestyle conflicts between the wacky creatives that are the artistic lifeblood of the show-within-the-show and the conservative management that wields money and power but can't quite figure out the creative process. If Bolaño were writing the show things wouldn't change much: maybe Kenneth would turn out to be a serial rapist, or there might be an episode where Jack teaches Liz how to quickly dismember and dispose of the corpse of one of Tracy's entourage after he was accidentally killed in what was meant to be a routine torture session.
Before I mount Bolaño's preserved head in some hall devoted to that sort of thing I should tell you about something that happened while I was at a café in Chicago reading chapter 7. It had been sunny all day, and there was quite a crowd inside the coffee shop. Despite the warnings of the weather reports it was still quite startling when the rain started. The storm was so heavy it caused a woman to gasp loudly; I assumed she was one of the mentally unstable sorts to frequent cafés around that time until I also noticed the raging torrent outside. The storm grew in intensity. Safe as we were inside the café, I couldn't understand the apprehension with which people regarded the storm. Finally a young woman on a bicycle outside collided with an SUV. She tried to stand in the rain three times with the twisted remains of her bike but toppled over each time. The fourth time she managed to stand. One of the indoor witnesses, a woman seated quite close to me, told me to watch her stuff and strode out unprotected into the rain to the scene of the accident. Her stride and gestures were full of authority. A firetruck and an ambulance arrived, together, and later a police car. The firemen placed the injured girl on a stretcher while the police huddled together in a way characteristic to those who enforce state violence. The café was still crowded and an old man tried to take the woman's seat which I had been tasked to guard. He seemed to be igrnoring my warnings not to sit there so I slapped him in the back with my copy of Distant Star and said "hey, I said the seat's taken". He moved along and sat elsewhere, facing away from the tragedy unfolding outside.
I found this bit describing a (fictional) play interesting: the action unfolds in a world inhabited exclusively by Siamese twins, where sadism and masochism are children's games. Death is the only punishable offense in the world and the main subject of the twins' discussions throughout the work, along with non-being, nothingness, and the next life. Each character devotes himself to torturing his Siamese twin for a certain period (a cycle, in the author's words) after which the tortured becomes the torturer and vice versa. But the inversion can only take place when "the depths have been plumbed." The reader of the play is, as one might imagine, confronted with every possible kind of cruelty. The action takes place in the principal charaters' house and the parking lot of a supermarket where they encounter other Siamese twins who display a a broad variety of disfiguring scars. Predictably, the play does not end with the death of one of the twins, but with a new cycle of pain. Sounds like Chuck Palahniuk's next book."
"Acabo de terminar Estrella Distante, me ha quedado una sensación de tristeza melancólica, de esas que son como irremediables, no inútiles. Uno no sabe que pensar exactamente al acabar de leer este pequeño libro. Bolaño ha logrado lo que ningún escritor ha logrado en mi sentir tristeza de verdad por el horror latinoamericano.
A parte de todo ha nombrado en tres historias de hombres admirables a uno de los psicólogos mas influyentes en mi emocionalidad, Fritz Perls. Insisto que nadie se ha acercado tanto a las problemáticas mas profundas de estos pueblos como Bolaño, el tipo que es capaz de horrorizarnos de una forma nada morbosa, de ponernos los pelos de punta, de indignarnos mucho.
Yo si creo que este sujeto es insuperable, su forma de escribir nos transporta, nos sumerge en sus libros con gran facilidad y aparte habla de lo que casi nadie es capaz de hablar y lo hace de esta forma quizá poética que te duele pero que no lo puedes dejar de leer. Si, la literatura es una mierda como dice él, porque la buena literatura habla de la mierda y el lo supo hacer y te engancha dentro de esa mierda."
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