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Thursday 4 August 2022

“In The Distance“ by Hernan Diaz - review


 “In the Distance” by Hernan Diaz:

Hernan Diaz’ masterful debut novel, a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction finalist, plays somewhere around the middle of the nineteenth century. We follow Håkan Söderströms life on a long and arduous journey from Sweden to America, always in search for his brother, whom he lost at the beginning of their trip in the harbor of Portsmouth, England. They were both mere boys, almost still children and left Sweden, like so many other Europeans, for the promises the new continent of America held.


Håkan, the “Hawk“ as he will be called by others, is the hero of the book. On his quest for his brother he grows into a remarkable giant of a man. To most he looks “like an old, strong Christ“.


The novel is a Western, reminiscent of the atypical Westerns of Cormack McCarthy or Jim Jarmusch. With them it shares the American mistrust of authorities, the strife for autarchy and the use of glorified violence. It lets us take part in one of the great myths of America, the colonization of the West. This extraordinary epic tale of a lone man’s journey into the heart of the American frontier, has many memorable scenes. Håkan, after loosing his brother in England, with dogged determination gets on a boat bound for San Francisco, rather than New York, and then spends countless, circular, unmapped years wandering the deserts and plains of the western and southwestern territories around the time of the California Gold Rush. He aims to cross the continent to New York in search of his brother Linus and starts travelling east against the endless tide of immigrants voyaging west.


We see the world close to Håkan’s consciousness, childlike, impressible and confused. Due to his lack of English comprehension Håkan has to guess most of the times what is going on. This makes him, especially in his younger years, a vulnerable character of a simple clarity who is at the mercy of his fellow travellers who are, more often than not, greedy, exploitive, mean spirited, dangerous and violent adventurers, prospectors and colonists.


After several gravely life-threatening, dangerous, disappointing and bitter encounters with humans and after his bewilderment at the rising “civilization” he increasingly finds unbearable, Håkan chooses the life of a recluse, takes on an animal existence and relies totally on what nature has to offer.


Diaz’ shows the history of America and its western conquest in all its bloody, horrifying, stupid detail, thus only showing the bitter truth of human existence. Håkan, always driven on by his quest forward to an unreachable goal and future, emerges from the depths of each terrifying experience again and again with resilience and animal intuition. 


With a precise, masterfully controlled, often rustic, poetic prose which is grounded in the young  Håkan’s perspective and a simple narrative structure Diaz’ paints an existentialist Western, a mystic parable, that leaves the reader often utterly devastated but then, as often, hopeful, too. An extraordinary achievement.




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