Themes in Bolano's By Night in Chile

Hard to know how to interpret Roberto Bolano's debut novel, By Night in Chile (2000), as the plot unfolds in a dreamlike manner, moving from one scene to another w/ no obvious breaks or conclusions - the story of a Chilean priest, Sebastian, who is reflecting about the course of his life - his faith and his literary aspirations. In what roughly marks the 2nd half of this short (130 pp) novel, Father S. tells how he goes on a special assignment for the church to report on the decay of church buildings in Europe; on this mission he notes that most of the decay is caused by pigeon shit, and some of the priests have figured out a way to clear out the pigeons - using trained falcons. This must signify something, though I honestly have no idea what. Father S. returns to Chile an continues with his dual life, priest and poet/literary critic (not unheard of - GM Hopkins, Brother Antonius, Thas Merton...). He gives us a remarkably quick summary of the political upheavals in Chile, the election and the death of Allende, and then something really strange happens as he's approached by two men and hired for a top-secret mission, giving Pinochet and his entourage a series of lessons on Marxism. In one scene Pinochet privately boasts that he - unlike Allende and other Chilean leaders - is a true intellectual and an author of books on military strategy (true, I think) - but despite the ominous setting nothing in particular comes of these episode, Eventually Father S joins a literary salon held at the house of a wealthy woman and aspiring though barely competent writer; eventually, the salonists realize that the woman's house is a front and that political prisoners are interrogated and tortured in the many rooms of the sinuous basement. Father S withdraws from the salon and in the final moments reflects on his life, wondering about his complicity and guilt - so again this seems to be symbolic (there also are strange dreams involving a confrontation w/ the Judas Tree, place for the guilty to commit suicide I think) but the symbolism is elusive. Perhaps the point is that artists and intellectuals (and the clergy?) living in a corrupt culture, under a military dictatorship, are really collaborators, at least by their inaction and willful blindness; religious institutions are corrupt as well  (the pigeon shit) and are equally guilty for resorting to violence (falcons trained to attack birds) to protect their status and property. This novel probably merits a 2nd reading - or at least further exploration in Bolano's work, which is always worth reading, especially the short stories.