BitterSweetLife

Flash Review: Julio Cortazar Suspects Ultimate Reality


A little while ago I finished Julio Cortazar’s sterling book of short stories, Blow-Up and Other Stories. (Nothing like clarity in a title.) I’ve been a Cortazar enthusiast ever since I read his 1.5-page masterpiece, “A Continuity of Parks” in my undergrad Intro to Fiction class, and experienced the sensation of my mind being gently turned inside out like a wrinkled, gray sock.

Cortazar blends startling strands of magical realism with sharp psychological insight and an imagination wild enough for any jungle—and I flat out loved this book. But reviewing a book of short stories is hard. Rather than try to give an assessment of the totality of the fifteen distinctive stories in Blow-Up, I’ve decided to comment on the short story that originally yanked me into Cortazar’s world: “A Continuity of Parks.” Hopefully this will serve notice that you should get this book and read it.

“A Continuity of Parks” is a title designed to lull to reader to sleep even before the story begins. It works. Who would guess that under the environmentally-conscious-sounding title, peril, deception and betrayal lurk? You’re drawn into the detached world of the protagonist, a strangely intellectual man who owns a large estate. When he begins to read an action-suspense novel, you are submerged in the plot as well, caught up in a story within a story. Cortazar’s use of vivid emotional words is adroit and cunning.

Somehow it becomes hard to tell where the character’s life leaves off and the novel begins; details in the “novel” sound oddly familiar—and they should. It’s because they describe the protagonist’s world, where he is secluded in his velvet armchair as the sun is fast going down. When a murderer bounds up a silent stairway and story morphs into story, we nervously glance over our shoulders. The account juts suddenly into our living rooms. With just one page of words, Cortazar has challenged not only the limits of interpretation, but also the certainty of our personal safety.

Not sure that you’re ready for brain surgery under the scalpel of Cortazar’s short stories? Remember, it’s in a good cause: the cause of reality. Everyone needs to be reminded, in C.S. Lewis’s words, of “the quality of the real universe, the divine, magical, terrifying and ecstatic reality in which we all live.” I think Cortazar gets it. Or at least he suspects. As he writes in “The Pursuer”:

…Johnny obsessed by something that his intelligence was not equal to comprehending, but which floats slowly into his music, caresses his skin, perhaps is readying for an unpredictable leap which we will never understand.

And again:

…a poor devil like me with more plagues than the devil under his skin had enough awareness to feel that everything was like a jelly, that everything was very shaky everywhere, you only had to concentrate a little, feel a little, be quiet for a little bit, to find the holes.

Chalk one up for Julio Cortazar and his “magical, terrifying and ecstatic” writing. Now do yourself a favor and immerse yourself in a Cortazar short story. Life isn't as flat, as dry, or as simple as it seems.

Yeah, yeah, it's on the Master Book List.

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