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Loading... Fantomas Versus the Multinational Vampires: An Attainable Utopiaby Julio Cortázar
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. Not quite what I expected, but still a marvelously creative work that evoked the magical realism of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Cortazar used his actual appearance in a comic book [Fantomas #201 (Feb. 1975), whose story involves the destruction of books and libraries by a secret society. In the hero's quest to stop them, he involves several contemporary artists, including Cortazar and Susan Sontag] -- reproduced in part here -- as a jumping off point to decry the machinations of capitalist interests, corporations, and intelligence organizations to undermine the democratic will of the peoples of the world's nations. ( ) no reviews | add a review
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The first translation of Julio Cortázar's genre-jumping meta-comic/novella, featuring Cortázar himself, Susan Sontag, and Octavio Paz in a race to prevent international bibliocide. Octavio Paz: "If you love art, do something, Fantomas!" Fantomas: "I will, you can depend on it." First published in Spanish in 1975 and previously untranslated, Fantomas versus the Multinational Vampires is Julio Cortázar's genre-jumping mash-up of his participation in the Second Russell Tribunal on human rights abuses in Latin America and his cameo appearance in issue number 201 of the Mexican comic book series Fantomas: The Elegant Menace. With his characteristic narrative inventiveness, Cortázar offers a quixotic meta-comic/novella that challenges not only the form of the novel but its political weight in contemporary cultural life. Needing something to read on the train from Brussels (where he had attended the ineffectual tribunal meeting), our hero (Julio Cortázar) picks up the latest issue of the Fantomas comic. He grows increasingly absorbed by the comic book's tale of bibliocide (a sinister bibliophobic plot to obliterate every book from the archives of humanity), especially when he sees the character Fantomas embark upon a series of telephone conversations with literary figures, starting with "The Great Argentine Writer" himself, Julio Cortázar (and also including Octavio Paz and a tough-talking Susan Sontag). Soon, Cortázar begins to erase the thin line between real-life atrocities and fictional mayhem in an attempt to bring attention to the human rights violations taking place with impunity in the country from which he was exiled. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)863.62Literature Spanish and Portuguese Spanish fiction 20th Century 1900-1945LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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