Júlio Cortázar reads "El perseguidor" (The Pursuer).


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Júlio Cortázar: El Perseguidor (The Pursuer)

Júlio Cortázar

Júlio Cortázar

Interview with Júlio Cortázar

Interview with Júlio Cortázar to a Spanish Television Channel, in 13 parts.


Part 2/13 of the interview
Part 3/13 of the interview
Part 4/13 of the interview
Part 5/13 of the interview
Part 6/13 of the interview
Part 7/13 of the interview
Part 8/13 of the interview
Part 9/13 of the interview
Part 10/13 of the interview
Part 11/13 of the interview
Part 12/13 of the interview
Part 13/13 of the interview

Júlio Cortázar: El Perseguidor (The Pursuer)

El Perseguidor (The Pursuer) is one of Cortázar's greatest literary achievements, and a classic in the XX Century literature. With an existential background masterly build, the story describes the last days of a saxophone virtuoso, Johnny Carter, whose life runs between lucidity and self-destruction. El perseguidor gives us a vivid image of the bebop scene in 1950s Paris, as we get a glimpse of Johnny's personal life, from his severe drug addiction and psychological instability to his profound philosophical insights.
Since it was first published in 1959, this tribute to the genius of Charlie Parker, has seen along the years the enthusiasm of many readers, who consider it, as Hopscotch, an initiatory experience.

The Pursuer is included in End of the Game and Other Stories.

Related links: Júlio Cortázar reads an extract from his short story El Perseguidor

Júlio Cortázar

Júlio Cortázar died 26 years ago on February 12, 1984.

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Júlio Cortázar: El perseguidor

Júlio Cortázar reads an extract from his short story "El Perseguidor" ("The Pursuer"), based on the life of the jazz musician Charlie Parker.

The soundtrack is Charlie Parker's "Out Of Nowhere".





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Julio Cortázar

Julio Cortázar (1914 – 1984), Argentine writer



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Latin American Literature

Mentiras Piadosas

Rodrigo Fresán writes about Mentiras Piadosas, a film directed by Diego Sabanés, based on a short story by Julio Cortázar "La salud de los enfermos". You can find the text in Pagina 12.

 

Julio Cortázar and Carol Dunlop: Autonauts of the Cosmoroute

Jason Weiss reviews Julio Cortázar and Carol Dunlop's Autonauts of the Cosmoroute.

Autonauts of the Cosmoroute: A Timeless Voyage from Paris to Marseille—the last book published in Cortázar’s lifetime, it appeared in Spanish in 1983 and is now available in a fluid and felicitous English translation by Anne McLean—figures among his most playful works, its tone recalling, in a lighter vein, travelers’ tales from the age of discovery. Simultaneously, it offers another take on the collage aesthetic that underlies his novels and kaleidoscopic multigenre books, such as Around the Day in Eighty Worlds (1967). After an extended preamble, which introduces the expedition’s protagonists, genesis, and preparations, the record itself comprises a daily log, photos, hand-drawn maps of the rest areas, and the authors’ many commentaries. In these, Cortázar and Dunlop dwell on physical surroundings, metaphysical speculations, cultural reflections, and encounters with truckers, highway workers, and other travelers, as well as observations of each other’s habits; they remark, too, on how their enchanted state has changed them, even sharpening the details in their dreams.

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Latin American Literature

Julio Cortázar and Carol Dunlop: Autonauts of the Cosmoroute

Nicole Gluckstern reviews Julio Cortázar and Carol Dunlop's Autonauts of the Cosmoroute (Los autonautas de la cosmopista).

Certain travelogues can be likened to love letters to a destination, though rarely does actual romance play a part in their construction. But when acclaimed postmodern Argentine author Julio Cortázar took to the road with his third wife, Carol Dunlop, it was a journey precipitated by mutual fondness as much as a desire for discovery.

In Autonauts of the Cosmoroute (Archipelago Books, 354 pages, $20) an author best known for his nonsequential opus Hopscotch and collections of surreal short stories approaches the task of travel with the same whimsy and contradiction that characterize his literary oeuvre. Setting out on a pseudoscientific expedition to map the freeway between Paris and Marseilles, a distance of approximately 500 miles, Cortázar (nicknamed El Lobo) and the Canadian Dunlop (La Osita) spend a full 33 days en route, confining themselves to two rest stops per day.

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Argentine Literature

Although a bit off-topic here's a review of Milan Kundera's The Curtain where he tells of an encounter with Gabriel García Márquez, Carlos Fuentes, and Julio Cortázar in Prague.

During a conversation with a French acquaintance he is eager not to let his account of life in Prague under Soviet surveillance dip into the syrupy sweet “aesthetic evil” of kitsch. As the dominant style in the 19th century, kitsch was understood by Central Europeans as the tyranny of over-blown Romanticism. Kundera describes an episode that could be found in one of his novels: an apartment swap with a womanizing friend that befuddles the Soviet spies as well as the friend’s multiple lovers. The ensuing icy response to the light treatment of a heavy subject is chalked up to the Frenchman’s own distaste for the vulgar, his nation’s equivalent of kitsch. The two men are held apart not by their respective native languages, but by a cultural barrier that is deeply engrained within their national literary consciousness. As an antidote to this story of national differences Kundera describes a memorable encounter with Latin American writers, Gabriel García Márquez, Carlos Fuentes, and Julio Cortázar, when the trio visited Prague in the early days of the Russian occupation. “We would talk and a bridge—silvery, light, quivering, shimmering—formed like a rainbow over the century between my little Central Europe and the immense Latin America; a bridge that linked Matyas Braun’s ecstatic statues in Prague to the mad churches of Mexico.” For Kundera, the experience of reading One Hundred Years of Solitude moves from a free-flowing appraisal of magical realism, into an analysis of historical and social continuities between two countries traumatized by centuries of invasion.

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Latin American Literature

Interview with Julio Cortazar

Evelyn Picon Garfield:Let's begin with some general questions. How would you characterize your writing within the context of a literary generation in Argentina and in Latin America?

Julio Cortázar: The question is somewhat ambiguous because there are many ways to belong to a generation. I suppose you are referring to a strictly literary generation. Let's leave Latin America aside until later since the Argentine panorama is complicated enough. In order to understand generations you must have distanced yourself in time because while you are experiencing that generational context, you don't realize it. I mean that when I began to write, or rather publish in 1950, I wasn't aware of any generational context. I was able to discern some strengths, writers I admired in Argentina and others I detested; but now, twenty-five years later, I believe I'll be able to say a few intelligent words about it. The first part of my work is situated along extremely intellectual lines, the short stories, Beastiary for example. It is rather logical to imagine that in the fifties I was inclined towards the most refined and cultured writers, and to some extent influenced by foreign literatures, that is European, above all English and French. It is necessary to mention Borges, at once, because fortunately for me, his was not a thematic or idiomatic influence but rather a moral one. He taught me and others to be rigorous, implacable in our writing, to publish only what was accomplished literature. It is important to point this out because, in that period, Argentina was very unkempt in literary matters. There was little rigor, little self-criticism. Someone as extra ordinary as Roberto Arlt, the opposite of Borges in every sense, was not at all self-critical. Perhaps for the best, since self-criticism might have rendered his writing sterile. His language is untidy, full of stylistic errors, weak. But it has an enormous creative force. Borges has less creative energy in that sense, but he compensates for it with an intellectual reflection of a quality and refinement that for me was unforgettable. And so I automatically leaned towards that hyper-intellectual bent in Argentina. But it is all ambivalent because at the same time I had discovered Horacio Quiroga and Roberto Arlt, populist writers. You know the division between the Florida and Boedo groups. I had also discovered those in Boedo. And what I called "force," a moment ago, impressed me. So, for example, the whole "porteno" side of city life in the short stories of Bestiary, I owe--not as a direct influence but rather as rich themes--to Roberto Arlt. Because despite all that has been said about Borges' Buenos Aires--a fantastic, invented Buenos Aires--that Buenos Aires does exist but it is far from being all that the city is. Arlt perceived things from below for cultural, vital and professional reasons and saw a Buenos Aires to live in and stroll through, to love in and suffer in, while Borges saw a Buenos Aires of mythic destinies, of a metaphysical mother and eternity. So you see, my place in that generation--which is not mine but the previous one--at the same time fulfills a kind of moral, ethical obedience to Borges' great lesson, and a teluric, sensual, erotic (as you like) obedience to Roberto Arlt. There are many examples, of course, but this one should give you an idea of what I mean. Others in my generation followed similar paths at times, but I know of no one else who simultaneously encompassed those two poles. There were pseudo-Borgeseans who produced an imitative literature.

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Latin American Literature

Julio Cortazar - Argentina

Biography:
Julio Cortázar (sometimes called "Grandísimo Cronopio" in reference to a genus of fantastic creatures he created) was born in Brussels, Belgium, in 1914, to Argentine parents. When he was four years old, his family returned to Buenos Aires to a section of town called Banfield. After completing his studies at the University of Buenos Aires, he became a professor of French literature at the University of Cuyo, Mendoza, in the middle 1940s.

In 1951, in opposition to the Perón regime, Cortázar emigrated to France, where he lived until his death. From 1952 he worked for UNESCO as a translator. His translation projects included Spanish renderings of Defoe's Robinson Crusoe and the stories of Edgar Allan Poe, and it is commonly noted that Poe's influence is recognizable in his work.

In his later years he underwent a political transformation, becoming actively engaged with leftist causes in Latin America, and openly supporting the Cuban Revolution and the Sandinista government in Nicaragua.

He was married three times, to Aurora Bernárdez (in 1953), Ugné Karvelis and Carol Dunlop.

Julio Cortázar died of leukemia in Paris in 1984 and was interred there in the Cimetière du Montparnasse. It has recently been suggested that AIDS (contracted through a blood transfusion before this disease was identified and given a name) may have been the cause of his death, though the fact not only reminds uncomfirmed, but is sometimes considered a urban myth.

You can find the full biography here

Related Posts:
Hopscotch by Julio Cortázar
Diary of Andrés Fava by Julio Cortázar
Final Exam by Julio Cortázar

Works:
1938 - Presencía
1949 - Los Reyes
1951 - Bestiario
1956 - Final del juego
1959 - Las Armas Secretas
1960 - Los Premios - The Winners
1962 - Historias de Cronopios y de Famas - Cronopios and Famas
1963 - Rayuela - Hopscotch
1964 - Cuentos
1966 - Todos Los Fuegos El Fuego / All the Fires the Fire
1967 - El perseguidor y otros cuentos
1967 - Blow-Up And Other Stories
1967 - La vuelta al día en ochenta mundos - Around the Day in Eighty Worlds
1968 - Ceremonias
1968 - Buenos Aires
1968 - 62 / Modelo para armar - 62: A Model Kit
1969 - Último round
1970 - Literatura en la revolución y revolución en la literatura (with Oscar Collazos and Mario Vargas Llosa)
1970 - Viaje alrededor de una mesa
1971 - La isla a mediodía y otros relatos
1971 - Pameos y meopas
1972 - Prosa del observatorio
1973 - Libro de Manuel
1973 - La casilla de los Morelli
1974 - Octaedro
1976 - Humanario
1976 - Los relatos (3 vols.)
1977 - Alguien Que Anda Por Ahi
1979 - Un Tal Lucas
1980 - A Change of Light and Other Stories
1981 - París: ritmos de una ciudad
1981 - Queremos Tanto a Glenda
1983 - Deshoras
1983 - Los autonautas de la cosmopista
1983 - Nicaragua, tan violentamente dulce - Nicaraguan Sketches
1984 - Salvo El Crepusculo
1984 - Argentina: años de alambradas culturales
1984 - Nada a Pehuajó, y Adiós, Robinson
1985 - Cortázar
1986 - El Examen
1986 - Divertimento
1987 - Policrítica en la hora de los chacales
1987 - Diario de Andres Fava - Diary of Andres Fava
1989 - Fantomas contra los vampiros multinacionales
1990 - Cartas a una pelirroja
1994 - Cuentos completos (1945-1982)
1994 - Siete Cuentos
1994 - Obra crítica (3 vols.)

On film:
1966 - Blow-Up - Directed by Michelangelo Antonioni

Final Exam by Julio Cortazar

A review of Julio Cortazar's Examen

There is a reason why that novel, "Final Exam", written in 1949-1950, has taken so long to see print. In an introductory note, Cortazar (who died in 1984, not long before a Spanish edition was finally produced) says merely that "it was impossible to publish the book then".

But much of the responsibility must be placed on the text itself, which is dense, challenging, obscure, highly allusive and at times incoherent, and generally lacks the magic that characterizes the mature Cortazar. At the same time, it is an ambitious, innovative and revealing book, so it will be welcomed by all the Undoomed, members of the Cult of Julio (since "anyone who doesn't read Cortazar is doomed", according to Pablo Neruda).

Cortazar always struggled with longer forms. His masterwork, "Hopscotch", overcomes this by piecing together stories, poems and essays, then allowing the reader to skip from one to another rather than reading them sequentially. But many of his other novels have a planned-out quality that diminishes the spontaneity found in his shorter prose. (Cortazar once wrote that he wanted his writing to be like a jazz ``take'': a single, continuous, improvisational riff.)

You can find the full article here.

Buy Final Exam at Amazon.com

Diary of Andrés Fava by Julio Cortázar

A review of Julio Cortázar's Diario de Andrés Fava (Diary of Andrés Fava)

This previously unpublished portion of an early work by Cortázar is actually a fragment of a fragment. Ostensibly the daily jottings of Andrés Fava, a peripheral character in the novel 'Final Exam', the text offers a whirlwind voyage through Cortázar's mind. Written in 1950 and set in an eerie, fog-bound Buenos Aires, it anticipates the mental games and mortal quests of the great Argentine writer's masterpiece, 'Hopscotch', and more experimental works like 'Cronopios and Famas' and 'Around the Day in Eighty Worlds'. Overflowing with existential riffs and noirish turns, the narrative also features notes on jazz and appearances by phantasmagoric creatures of the imagination. 'This notebook is a cage full of monsters', Cortázar writes, 'and outside is Buenos Aires'.

You can find the review here.

Buy Diary of Andres Fava at Amazon.com

Hopscotch by Julio Cortazar

In 1963, Júlio Cortazár achieve world fame with the publication of Rayuela, and became one of the main figures of the Latin American literary boom.
This book works as some kind of proto-hipertext, and Cortazár surprises the reader by having a "Table of Instructions" where he explains that "In its own way, this book consists of many books, but two books above all."
To start reading we're presented with two options, to read the book in the normal way up to the chapter 56, or follow the order indicated at the end of each chapter, going back and forward, starting from chapter 73.
The key character is Horacio Oliveira a bohemian argentine living in Paris, and his girlfriend "La Maga". The book presents episodes of Oliveira's life independent of the chronological order, complemented with philosophical and literary meditations.
The book it's hard to read, but once you're in to it, it's also hard to leave.

Buy Hopscotch at Amazon.com