Julio Cortázar (1914–1984)

I read this in the normal order, which feels a bit like reviewing a maze after only walking through one corridor.

The premise should be gimmicky. Somehow it isn't. It's dense, stream-of-consciousness, and full of the sort of conversations that make you wonder whether everyone involved is a genius, insufferable, or both. The whole thing feels like a group of intellectuals talking past one another in a café while accidentally producing literature.

Dense, meandering, frequently confusing, and show more best approached in a particular state of mind (I found a glass of wine helped considerably). I suspect this book improves in direct proportion to your willingness to surrender to it.

I enjoyed it enough that I now want a physical copy so I can read it again in hopscotch order and discover whether I missed the point entirely the first time. Whether that will clarify things or simply confuse me more remains to be seen. show less

In the spring of 1982, the Argentinian author Julio Cortázar and his wife Carol Dunlop decide to drive from Paris to Marseille, a 790 km (450 mi) trip, and to write about the trip. This seems simple (and boring) enough, right? However, the master humorist and surrealist and his wife decide to turn this trip into a scientific expedition and exploration of all of the rest stops along the route. They plan to visit two rest stops per day, and there are 70 stops along the way.

After consulting show more travel diaries by Captain Cook and Marco Polo, and ensuring that they have sufficent supplies to prevent scurvy, Cortázar ('El Lobo') and Dunlop ('La Osita', or 'Little Bear') embark on their epic journey, led by their faithful Volkswagen beetle van 'Fafner' ('the dragon').

The 33 day trip is filled with bizarre and hilarious episodes, including a near-fatal encounter with a swarm of carnivorous ants, confrontations with suspicious gendarmes and highway workers, and the constant threats of large trucks and sports cars traveling at impossible speeds. The voyagers also discover a site where witches were tortured and executed, which other travelers naïvely mistake for a children's playground.

In the latter part of the journey, the entries become more introspective and philosophical, and are infused with the love that El Lobo and La Ostia share for each other. A joyful sadness also permeates the last pages, as deceased friends are mourned and loved, and the end of the journey is celebrated with wine and tears.

This travelogue/flight of ideals/love story is unlike anything I've ever read, and, although it drags in a couple of spots, preventing me from giving a five star rating, is highly recommended. show less

What a wonderful book. Part essay, part travelogue with a smattering of fiction, it's an indescribable blend of humor, sadness, quirk and love. Author Julio Cortázar cooked up a plan with his second wife Carol Dunlop to drive from Paris to Marseilles in their VW bus nicknamed Fafner, the dragon. The catch is, they stopped at every single rest-stop along the way at the count of two per day, sleeping over night at the second one. This book chronicles their thoughts and notes throughout the show more journey. It really is a wonderful book, demonstrating how despite such odd circumstances Cortázar and Dunlop found great joy escaping the world, being not utterly isolated but separated from their responsibilities and obligations. Instead, they focused on each other, on reading, writing and observing.

Their writing covers great terrain--despite the modest terrain they are actually covering in the VW--from the philosophical to the poetic, to the mundane and pseudo-scientific. Light-hearted humor arises when they treat the journey "scientifically" with a daily "travel log" in which they indicate times of departure, weather, what they ate, where the bus was parked (facing N.W.N, for example), and so on. There was also humor in a certain ironic/exaggerated paranoia they exhibit as if their journey is threatened at times by the political powers-that-be because Cortázar was not only a writer but a political activist. As, for example, a rest area was "closed" to sabotage their journey.

Love, and the joy of their togetherness, was a major theme expressed throughout the story. Physical and emotional love. Their affection is so gentle and so poetic, reading it is near meditative in quality. Which makes it all the more tragic to read the concluding chapter where Cortázar notes how soon after the journey was completed, Dunlop died of an illness she had been battling. It was so sad, given their tremendous affection. And just a couple years later, Cortázar dies!

In the end, they summarize the journey, as unintentionally a Zen expedition. They set off not knowing what they would find and what they found was the beauty of existence even in the most absurd of situations. Touring rest areas.

The only aspect of the story that didn't sit well with me was the personification of Fafner, the VW bus. Admittedly, in my own past, I did briefly personify the car I had in college, a '72 Dodge Dart that my friend Dave Fagan dubbed the Death Sled. I accused said vehicle of attempting to kill me on several occasions. Its attacks included but were not limited to: a steering system that pulled to the left, windshield wipers that gave out in the middle of a torrential downpour whilst driving from Cleveland to Columbus, Ohio, and scalding burns on the thighs occasioned by the vinyl bench seat, which could achieve temperatures that could smelt iron if left exposed to direct sunlight. But despite my own experience with personifying vehicles in my youth, I was left somewhat uncomfortable with affection expressed for a motor vehicle as charmingly and innocently as it was expressed. And with no disrespect intended to the legacy of this book or Cortázar, reading their descriptions caused me to reflect on the death penalty. You see, in the U.S., the death penalty is still legal despite the immorality of the state killing a prisoner. But a corporation can't seem to die no matter the heinous crimes it commits. No matter whom it kills or what laws it breaks. A few individuals on rare occasions can be put in jail for fraud they commit within a corporation, but the corporation goes on. It rebrands. And over time, people forget. A generation later, a brand that was once conservative can become hip. A brand that once poisoned an ocean, can be forgiven. Volkswagen was, as you can learn from a quick trip to Wikipedia, founded by the Nazi Party. And Volkswagen's formative years were spent making all sorts of vehicles for the war effort. Hitler himself took a person interest in the success of Volkswagen. Rather ironic how the VW bus and the VW beetle became symbols of the hippie movement in the sixties, isn't it? Not only ironic, but it demonstrates how brands and Capitalism can swallow up idealism and sell it back to you. Levis is one of the current brands that is trying to advertise in the spirit of the Occupy movement. As if, somehow, wearing Levis makes you more free, more independent minded and more creative. Brands want us to personify their products in order to develop an emotional relationship with them and choose to purchase them again. Generating emotion in advertising is a core trick to drive sales. A trick that often has nothing whatsoever to do with the product itself. Think of Coke. Or Pepsi. And Cortazar being an ardent Socialist, I couldn't help but wonder why he allowed himself to be seduced by this product. So...I couldn't help but not find emotional affection for a VW bus as less charming than it was intended to be.

At any rate, this is wholly my own reaction to this aspect of the book and despite the digression it sent me off in my own mind, I can none-the-less whole-heartedly recommend this book. show less

Mirá si justo yo voy a reseñar Rayuela. Me limito a tirar puñaladas de loco, a ver si de alguna forma araño un par de ideas coherentes.

A todos los que dicen que una vez llegaron a los capítulos “de otros lugares” no pudieron seguir adelante, tengo que revelarles algo: Cortázar no los traicionó. Dejó muy en claro que eso capítulos eran innecesarios en la primera lectura. Y en la sutileza Cortazariana, “innecesarios” significa “yo te diría que no los leas”.

“Rayuela” show more es muchos libros, pero sobre todo es dos libros, y te recomiendo leer los dos. Una primera lectura de corrido donde la historia es como es, y ya. Y Oliveira quizá parezca un reverendo hijo de puta, y La Maga una estúpida a los ojos estandarizados de un lector al que todavía no le cacheteó el ida y vuelta de la novela. A la segunda lectura, saltando de acá para allá en el orden sugerido (je, sugerido) por el autor, ésa otra dimensión que tiene el relato, una dimensión física que te lleva de acá para allá al mismo tiempo que los hechos y personajes van de acá para allá (y se siente, se siente en la vida del relato más que en el texto), la atmósfera, la multidimensionalidad es otra.

Rayuela es una experiencia a la que no me animaba, mitad porque me crié en la blogósfera y había mucho fanático de la novela dando vueltas. Me pasa que tiendo a escapar al entusiasmo general. Por otro lado, no me sentía preparado. Ahora creo que se me abre un mundo de posibilidades exploratorias, no solo dentro de este libro tan releíble, sino en la literatura toda.

No sé. Mirá si me voy a poner a reseñar Rayuela. Justo yo, reseñar un libro como este. Algo de humildad me queda, todavía. Me limito a sentir el romance de un libro que pide ser releído y explorado como un vicio de entresemanas. show less