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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
28 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A marvelous collection of short stories -- but what makes them so is not easy to explain,
By Odysseus "A Traveller" (Virginia, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Blow-Up: And Other Stories (Paperback)
This book was my first experience with reading Cortazar. From the first story on, the excitement of encountering a new (to me) brilliant writer went through me like an electric shock. The book injected an excitement and alertness into what otherwise might have been a sluggish weekend.
I have found, however, that explaining the basis of this excitement to others is not easy. It comes down to the difficulty of explaining what it is that makes great writers truly great -- an elusive insight. Part of it is simple virtuosity; Cortazar possesses that which also distinguishes the writing of other greats such as Nabokov and Proust: that facility with language, the ability to find and to manipulate exactly the right words, to create a precise, vivid image, and to make music out of prose. (Note: I could perceive his virtuosity even though I read this book as an English translation.) But it goes beyond virtuosity. If Cortazar wrote about ideas to which I was indifferent, the writing would not matter to me. But his stories inspire those flashes of recognition that make reading exciting; he creates those "aha" moments through his ability to present a feeling or situation that you recognize on some level, even if it's one that never previously made it out of your subconscious and which you might not have thought to remark upon, had not Cortazar dug it up for you. From the general to the specific: This is a collection of short stories, most of which contain an element of the fantastic. Some of the flashes of recognition that I mention above are recognitions of mundane, daily feelings, but others are not. Cortazar seems to have ready access as well to our subconscious fears and to our dreams. To take but a few cases in point: One story involves a brother and sister who share a large, old wooden house, once owned by their great grandparents. At one point in the story, they hear voices and commotion from another part of the house. They bolt the doors, shut off that section, and confine themselves to living in the front part of the house. It's all left quite mysterious: Cortazar never explains who "they" are, who have taken over part of the house. But someting about this story rings eerily true; it's that bizarre combination of vivid, mundane reality, and unexplained phenomena, and illogical reactions to those phenomena, that characterize dreams. Another example is a story in which a young girl goes to live with distant relatives in their country house for a summer. The house has a tiger roaming the rooms, but let's put that aside: what is remarkable about the story is Cortazar's ability to bring the scene to life, of an urbanite or suburbanite who is new to this comparatively relaxed environment. In one small, but typically rendered scene, the main character finds a bug crawling in an antiquated wash basin. She flicks at it, it curls into a ball, and she easily washes it down with running water. This is classic Cortazar; with a few well-chosen sentences, he puts you in that world: a world where the reader senses the sunlight through the house, the smell of pollen in the air, the renewed emphasis on the freshness of vegetables at the local market, and the ease with such inconveniences as older plumbing and intrusions by bugs are encountered. Comparison with other writers is a bit unfair, because Cortazar has a voice all of his own. But in case it's helpful to you, Cortazar's precise prose reminded me a bit of Nabokov, his sense of wonder and magic recalled Steven Millhauser, and his trafficking in paradoxes a bit like Borges. But he's not quite like any of them: his prose focuses less than Borges on logical contradictions, and is more weighted toward precisely rendering sensory images. Several of the stories are outstanding. My favorites (in addition to the two mentioned above: "House Taken Over", and "Bestiary") included: Axolotls -- in which the narrator identifies very closely with an exotic amphibian species on his trips to the zoo. A Yellow Flower -- an encounter with a sort of reincarnation gone awry Continuity of Parks -- a very economical, very short story with an eerie, paradoxical twist The Night Face Up -- a story in which reality and dreams are very difficult to distinguish Cortazar is a master of the short story form. I would recommend him to anyone who likes the works of Borges, Millhauser, Nabokov, or Bruno Schulz.
27 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Exile as a State of Mind,
By James Paris "Tarnmoor" (Los Angeles, CA USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Blow-Up: And Other Stories (Paperback)
Julio Cortazar reminds me more of the late great Spanish film director, Luis Bunuel, one of the founding fathers of Surrealism, who once remarked that, when writing a film, he always aimed for whatever was most disturbing in any given situation. Similarly, Cortazar's stories are all constructed around a disturbing vision. In "The End of the Game," for instance, three children don bizarre costumes and assume attitudes for the passengers on the trains that zip by them. "Blow-Up" is very different from Antonioni's film. There is a menace in the interplay between the photographer, his unwitting subjects, and a third party who was watching both. My favorite story in the collection is "The Pursuer," a nakedly brilliant study of a black American Jazz musician and the critic who never quite understands the demons that give birth to the music. The story is dedicated to Ch. P., who I assume is Charley Parker. Cortazar's musician lives on the edge and is plagued by disturbing visions as he spirals down into a personal apocalypse. The critic, on the other hand, tries ineffectually to help the musician, but is more worried about what people will say about his latest study of the musician's work. Cortazar's stories take place in a kind of half-European, half-Latin Neverland. Born in Belgium of Argentinian parents, he spent most of his life in Europe. It is as if the author's self-exile gave birth to a demon of restlessness that possessed his characters. Although this is the first Cortazar I have read, it will not be the last.
16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Argentine in Paris,
By
This review is from: Blow-Up: And Other Stories (Paperback)
Julio Cortazar is a revolutionary but one far from home and not a political revolutionary but one that roams the further reaches of the psyche, just beyond where civilization says it is safe to go. Every single one of his many short stories is worth reading(so, if available, get all of them). His novels I find too experimental and mired in his theories but in the short story he shines like very few others. Some of his best are told through a childs perspective and all of his shorter fictions in a way take you into that kind of place where wonder still outweighs any learned way of seeing "reality" which in Cortazar is always in quotes. Cortazar likes to take you out of your normal context and give you a whole new set of associations, a whole new world to walk in. His novels are difficult but his stories are not. They invite the best kinds of speculation but they can also be appreciated at a glance. Cortazar is reputed to have had a very large record collection, mostly jazz, in his Paris lair in the sixties. I think he is one of those authors who would have been very interesting to know. Hip to the way peoples perception of the world were changing at the time, but persistent in his personal quests which led him down many strange avenues. To this his stories will attest. A note: Cortazar is sometimes grouped in with Borges and there are some good reasons why but I prefer Cortazar. Both play games with logic but Cortazar pleases both the mind and the emotions. The effect is more subtle.
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