i liked the chinese digression at the beginning but yeah towards the end there was too much happening. low is a lot more focussed.
he's like bolano for me cos he throws in a lot of literature references and a few of the characters are artists/poets/writers. also it's a similar thing to me of them both writing outside the mainstream of UK/USA, as in the settings of India, Latin America.
Also there's a similar vibe in that they both (appear) to have 'lived' and then written it up, rather than going on a creative writing course or whatever. so the occasional schmaltz you get with both of them also becomes a bit more forgivable. like this last one, 'low', it's quite corny and sentimental in places, you almost can't believe how cliched some of the stuff is, but he gets away with it somehow, cos it's very real. or because you know about his actual life story. like in some of the smaller bolano books, when he's writing out these dialogues between people and they start to get very turgid and meta, but you go with it because of the style. i guess the poetry training of the two of them as well, how they both did poetry for years and years but never really made it in that field, became recognised as novelists.
dunno really.
thayil has mentioned bolano quite a lot, he's written an article about him for the TLS, i think he's using the same strategy, of publicising a liver condition and the fact that times running out for him, it's like a marketing plan if you were cynical about it, but i feel like they would both be up front about that. I remember reading somewhere that bolano always wanted to be pictured with sunglasses cos he thought it made him look better. I suppose that thing is present with the two of them: the feeling that they are cranking a lot of stuff out cos they are close to death. they both write about death a huge amount.
and yeah, to go with the point tea made re satanic verses, i can't get along with a lot of Indian/S.American literature, cos of the magical realism, doesn't work for me, but these two have that side in them, but keep it in check.