著者

仁平 ふくみ

出版者

現代文芸論研究室

雑誌

れにくさ

巻号頁・発行日

vol.3, pp.92-110, 2012-03-30

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Nazi Literature in the Americas (1996) and Distant Star (1996) mark Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño's transition from poet to novelist. These two early novels—Bolaño calls them "siamese twins" -- introduce a number of the leitmotifs (i.e., the pursuit of the poet, the phantom work) that characterize the writer's later fiction, but how do the twinborn works relate to one another? The answer to this question can be found in the two novels. Although the majority of Nazi Literature assumes the form of an imagined dictionary of marginal right-wing authors, the novel's final "entry," entitled "The Infamous Ramírez Hoffman," breaks away from the dictionary form of the twelve previous entries. Interestingly, this thirteenth entry is the only one told in the first person. The sudden appearance of the first-person narrator in "The Infamous Ramírez Hoffman" allows Bolaño to tell a rather different kind of story, which describes not only the murderer-poet Ramírez Hoffman, but the narrator-witness (named "Bolaño") who chases after him, as well. The events of this atypical entry are revisited and expanded upon in Nazi Literature's twin work, Distant Star. In the "act" of reading, the novella's narrator takes on the role of detective. Indeed, it seems reasonable to assume that Bolaño opted to rewrite the "Ramírez Hoffman" story in order to flesh out this chase. Revised in this way, reading -- typically perceived to be passive -- becomes active. This, however, is not the only critical difference between the two works. For example, in Distant Star, the characters are given new names: Ramírez Hoffman is renamed Carlos Wieder (German for "twice") and the narrator Bolaño is renamed Arturo B. The two stories share similar conclusions, but in the climax of Distant Star, when Arturo B. (who appears as Bolaño's alter-ego in a number of the writer's later novels) comes face to face with Wieder, the narrator remarks that he feels the poet-murderer is his "twin." The narrator means to say that there is no clear boundary between the murderer and himself. In this paper, I will argue that Nazi Literature in the Americas and Distant Star share a similar kinship.