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A '60s Mexican cult masterpiece, Farabeuf is an enigmatic vision of the French surgeon L.H. Farabeuf's curious existence, from his morbidly erotic obsessions to his life as an inventor of grisly surgical instruments, an amateur photographer, and possibly even a spy in occupied Beijing during the Boxer Rebellion. With patience and purpose, Salvador Elizondo's sensual prose brilliantly constructs, explores, and proceeds to annihilate the boundaries between pain and pleasure, love and lust, show more reality and longing--between our individual and collective identities. In many ways a Latin American response to the work being done by European writers like Alain Robbe-Grillet, Farabeuf is at once single-minded in its intensity and nearly limitless in its possible interpretations, at times shocking and savage, at others sensuous and poetic. An unsung masterpiece of Spanish-language literature, now made available again in English on the fiftieth anniversary of its original publication. show less

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7 reviews
¿2.7?

Perdónenme, fans de Elizondo, pero de plano no lo pude acabar. Aunque tiene una prosa elegante y sus mecanismos narrativos son muy interesantes, me pareció demasiado redundante y esa sensación de estanco me agobió de más. No lo estoy leyendo para alguna tarea, ni para la tesis, así que ejerceré mi sacrosanto derecho como lector de mandar este libro al carajo.
Hace tiempo que no encontraba un libro que, siendo breve, resultara complejo. Interesante.
Farabeuf's impassioned descriptions of amputations induced Elizondo to write a biography about the French surgeon, to whom he attributes an abnormal eroticism.
Los inválidos, los deformes, nos turban espiritualmente porque son la prefiguración de una de nuestras posibilidades.
Mi identidad te inquieta porque en tu entrega confundí tu vida con tu muerte y pensé que ambas eran la misma cosa.

Salvador Elizondo
Salvador Elizondo considera en Farabeuf o la crónica de un instante (1965) que "somos un signo incompresible trazado sobre vidrio empañado en una tarde de lluvia. Somos el recuerdo, casi perdido, de un hecho remoto. Somos seres y cosas invocados mediante una fórmula de nigromancia. Somos una acumulación de palabras; un hecho consignado mediante una escritura ilegible; un testimonio que nadie escucha. Somos la imagen fugaz e involuntaria que cruza la mente de los amantes cuando se encuentran: Somos un pensamiento secreto.

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Common Knowledge

Canonical title*
Farabeuf o la crónica de un instante
Original title
Farabeuf o la crónica de un instante
Original publication date
1965
Original language*
Español
*Some information comes from Common Knowledge in other languages. Click "Edit" for more information.

Classifications

Genres
Fiction and Literature, General Fiction
DDC/MDS
863.0108972Literature & rhetoricSpanish LiteratureSpanish fictionBy TypeShort StoriesAnthologies
LCC
PQ7298.15 .L5 .F335Language and LiteratureFrench, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese literaturesSpanish literatureProvincial, local, colonial, etc.Spanish America
BISAC

Statistics

Members
84
Popularity
379,926
Reviews
6
Rating
(4.00)
Languages
English, French, Spanish
Media
Paper, Audiobook, Ebook
ISBNs
12
ASINs
4