Spotting the true genius is always easy. In literature there are very good writers, as many or more than bad. But as in any other dedication, they are touched by genetic chance to make them the incomparable example of all art or craft.
Julio Cortazar he is one of those geniuses. And, part of his genius resides in his synthesis of language, in the ability to generate imperishable images through phrases that find perfection in their form and in their background.
It is something like Cortázar having discovered the trick of language, which makes him a metalinguist towards a narrative that has become an endlessly fertile field where he sows his imagination. For Córtazar, language was freed to be used at whim or as needed for the final composition. There are those who compare it with Kafka, but honestly I think there is no color.
Phrases and paragraphs fruit of literary alchemy, in which sometimes the estrangement is conformed, the exit from reality to discover it under the prism of its essential nature; or perfect stories from which an astonishing facility emerges to narrate and penetrate as deeply as possible.
Reality, but also fantasy, transitions in perfect harmony from one side of the mirror to the other. Literature as magic. In one of my novels I rescued one of his quotes: "We walked without looking for each other, but knowing that we were walking to find each other." Little more needs to be said...
3 recommended books by Julio Cortázar
Rayuela
Unquestionably his best work. Horacio Oliveira reflects on his existence, his way of life, his decisions, but… how far do we want to read? What do we need to know? When to end this story?
The plot is presented to us with its disruptive nature with respect to any fictional narrative intention. And deep down it's a bit like life itself. The knot of the story is the predicted, the natural order of things, the more or less anticipated reactions, the proposed sequential reading differences invite us to be a new reader in each new reading.
Because we are never the same person and we will never be able to read the same book if we change the order. Our impressions of Horace and his circumstances will never be the same depending on how we approach the reading.
Synopsis: "Contranovela", "chronicle of a madness", "the black hole of a huge funnel", "a fierce shaking by the lapels", "a cry of warning", "a kind of atomic bomb", "a call to disorder necessary "," a gigantic humor "," a babble "...
With these and other expressions alluded to Rayuela, the novel that Julio Cortazar began to dream in 1958, it was published in 1963 and from then on it changed the history of literature and shook the lives of thousands of young people around the world.
Bestiario
Have you ever looked in the mirror and asked yourself who you are? Don't worry, the characters in this volume of stories will end up doing it for you. Discovering the beast, the basic living being that becomes aware of its being in a reflection that looks at it, is not always comfortable, but it is clearly necessary. It is not a mutation process, although it does have its point of fantasy...
Synopsis: Bestiary is the first book of stories that Julio Cortázar publishes under his real name. In these eight masterpieces there is not the slightest babble or youthful hangovers: they are perfect.
These stories, which speak of everyday objects and events, pass into the dimension of nightmare or revelation in a natural and imperceptible way. Surprise or discomfort are, in each text, a seasoning that adds to the indescribable pleasure of reading it.
Their stories upset us because they have a very rare feature in literature: they stare at us, as if they expected something from us.
After reading these true classics of the genre, our opinion about the world cannot remain the same. Bestiary is composed of "Bestiary" "Letter to a young lady in Paris" "House taken" "Headache" "Circe" "The gates of heaven" "Omnibus" and "Far".
Cronopios and fame stories
Deep down we are fantasies, pretenses of eternity blown like Dandelion seeds. Cortazar's fantasy is one of existential exuberance, where we can find the most ridiculous and resounding as the most beautiful among the warp.
Estrangement to laugh about the vital function of everything or nothing. Lyrism or poetic prose, pearls to discover exquisite taste in reading.
Summary: Historias de Cronopios y de Famas is a fantastic journey that removes us from reality to take us to the playful universe that Cortázar created within the spaces that grow between each daily situation.
In the absolutely mundane lies the ability to give rise to the most unsuspected observations, to break the delicate balance in which we subsist. The existence of the Cronopios, those wet and green beings, was revealed to Cortázar during a theater performance, shortly after his arrival in France.
Over the coming years I would begin to accumulate stories that ultimately fall into four different categories, to be published in a single volume titled Stories of Cronopios and Famas, in 1962. Cortázar masterfully instructs us to break the tedium of life.
Then he takes us by the hand to visit a family completely out of the ordinary. It takes a tour of the power that is hidden in all the plastic things and inanimate objects that surround us, to culminate in the famous imaginary beings that have captivated the world.
This book is a mixture of prose with poetry, of philosophy with comedy, of chronicle with fantasy. This book is the perfect guarantee to make even the grumpiest person smile.
