![]() ![]() ![]() Since embarking, rumors have spread about the mysterious figure who mostly stays belowdecks, whose outlandish attire only makes things worse: “the variety of animals that had gone into this coat, as well as the different stages of decrepitude of the hides, gave an idea both of how long the garment had been in the making and of how widely its wearer had traveled.” The tenor of the shipboard gossip invites reader associations with Westerns-movies and stories alike-the yarns and tall tales that mythologize an imagined North American frontier, a land of heroes and villains and an abundant, righteous violence: The crew marvels at his habit of bathing in the frigid water to most of them he looks “like an old, strong Christ.” Older than most of his shipmates, taller by a few heads, longhaired and long-bearded, Håkan stands out. We are somewhere around the middle of the nineteenth century. The first we see of Håkan Söderström, the enigmatic hero of Hernan Diaz’s masterful debut novel, In the Distance, he is groping his way out of a hole in the frozen sea, not far off the bow of an icebound ship headed for Alaska. ![]()
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