2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Pretentious, Sententious, Tendentious... and Fun!, January 6, 2009
Stop! If you don't like talky movies and meandering conversations, you'll hate Final Exam. No point reading further. Most of the 'action' in this novel of ideas occurs only implicitly in the final pages, yet intellectually the book reaches a stunning conclusion -- the same conclusion that Julio Cortazar reached in real life the year after he wrote Final Exam. (That's a hint, my friends, in lieu of a 'spoiler'.)
The first half of Final Exam follows five Buenos Aires 'intellectuals' as they wander all night through their city, talking impulsively, compulsively, incessantly. The only forbidden subject in such conversation is silence. Juan and Clara, a young married couple, are scheduled to take important university exams the evening of the next day, so elements of their studies pop up in the conversation with quizzical irrelevance. As you'd expect from such a crowd, much is said more for style than for substance. Juan is a poet; fragments of his own and others' poetry flair up now and then. Andres, somewhat older and possibly wiser, has a "history" with Clara that leaks into the conversation in fits and starts. His current girlfriend, Stella, is too dim to follow most of the discourse; her remarks form a kind of chorus of incomprehension. One allusion leads to another; no one sticks to any topic long; the conversation hop-scotches inconclusively while the protagonists bar-hop through the increasingly ominous chaos of the city. Stilted and disjointed as it is, their conversation rings true. Believe me, English speakers, that's how the intelligentsia of Argentina - and Mexico, Spain, Italy, France - talk! There's a virtuosic realism in Cortazar's depiction.
Through all the flippancy and logorrhea, a serious theme persists: the options open to a writer/thinker in a society like that of Argentina in 1950, the year when Final Exam was written. It was apparently Cortazar's first effort at writing a novel, and it remained unpublished until 1986, long after Cortazar's reputaion was established with 'The Winners' and 'Hopscotch'. Readers who know those later novels will easily see that Cortazar was experimenting in Final Exam, formulating his own mode in the rambling discourse of his characters, each of whom foreshadows a persona in his later work. But 'Final Exam' is more than a preview of Cortazar's accomplishments; it's a very powerful impressionistic portrayal of the despair and absurdity of Argentine society lurching toward mayhem. In retrospect, Cortazar seems to have been prescient. All the vicious madness of the military coups, the repressions, the "disappearances," the hyper-inflation and corruption, the degeneration of a once progressive economy into the sump of globalized capitalism, all seem ominously imminent in Final Exam.
The most vivid presence in the novel isn't any one of the human characters but rather the city of Buenos Aires, with its vainglorious boulevards and slimy alleys, its pompous opera house and its portentous docks. A strange fungoid smog has settled over the city -- not the chilly fog of English novels but a sweltering heat in which tempers fester, ambulance and fire sirens wail unseen, streets collapse in sink holes, rampages always seem to be happening just a few blocks away, rumors of violence scuttle from bar to bar like rats, and some monstrous upheaval is ever imminent. The less seen, the more foreseen, and weariness is the dominant emotion. The 'five characters in search of identity' are in fact being shadowed, stalked, by a sixth -- Abel -- perhaps a vindictive former friend or even a lover, who seems omnipresent in the city, a concealed threat in the smog and turmoil. The possibility of escape by Clara and Juan, Cortazar suggests, is precisely what enrages both Abel and the culture Abel personifies.
Cortazar is not an easy stylist. "Examen" (the original title) is written in a melange of proper Spanish, Buenos Aires patois, French, Italian, and even a few phrases of Latin. Translator Alfred Mac Adam introduces his effort by declaring the book essentially untranslatable, and he proves himself correct. He has translated only the content and none of the verbal artistry, sticking close to school-book English throughout. Even so, this is an exciting stream-of-consciousness novel, the first half of which will challenge your intellect and the second half of which will haunt your imagination.
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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A fascinating stream-of-consciousness narrative novel., April 4, 2000
This review is from: Final Exam (Hardcover)
Final Exam is a darkly funny novel set in a surreal Buenos Aires. Juan and Clara, two students at a Faculty called "The House" meet up with their friends Andres and Stella, as well as a journalist friend called "the chronicler". Juan and Clara are getting ready to take their final exam, but instead of preparing, they wander the city with their friends, encountering strange happenings in the squares and pondering life in cafes. All the while they are being trailed by the mysterious Abel, apparently a former lover of Clara's. Final Exam features stream-of-consciousness narrative techniques and is one of Julio Cortazar's best works. Ably translated from Spanish by Alfred MacAdam, Final Exam will serve to introduce English readers to a major literary talent.
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5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Foggy notions, May 16, 2000
This review is from: Final Exam (Hardcover)
Final exam is a hazy book . What the eyes of Andres Favas shows us is not only a foggy Buenos Aires but a journey into the labyrinths of the late 50's intelectuality. Where does it take him? nowhere of course... inertia is the result of extenuating thinking , so Andre and his friends talk , read , define and redifine life but go nowhere while a surreal city burns.
Cortazar always enjoyed playing with words ( much like Borges) but mostly he played with time. The book has brilliant words but also silence and a stream of consciousness flows through the entire book and through an impossible Buenos Aires , a constelation of metaphores and specially a fast and corrosive intelectually challenging book.
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