Word: cortazar
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...Adventure of a Photographer", a maniacal tale of two-dimensional artistic obsession, is one of the finest short stories Calvino has written, certainly superior to Julio Cortazar's celebrated photo story "Blow-Up." In the latter, a photographer tries to piece together the reality behind a photograph, but Calvino's protagonist goes one better, trying to discover the reality to photograph. The coldest, funniest, and only perfect story in this volume, "Photographer" is fast climbing on my Hot 100 of the Twentieth Century...
Dissenters must lead a double life. One family had a secret door in their closet where they hid such "subversive" material as banned Argentine Julio Cortazar's novels, Marx's complete works, and New York Times articles about Argentine repression. Although they vocally criticized the government in their apartment, in public cafes with friends they hyperbolically praised Videla's political policies. "You can't trust anyone," they explained...
...Although Cortazar's characters are politically naive, he should be credited for ending his 25-year-long public neutrality. Since 1951 when his Parisian self-exile began, he has lauded Allende's and Castro's governments, but has not openly condemned his own nation...
...this change, then? It may be that Cortazar is bending to criticism for his lack of political commitment. Or perhaps with age he is less concerned with hermetic mind-games and more with society. It is also likely that, as his exile progresses, Cortazar realizes that the government must change hands if he hopes to return to Argentina...
Like his perplexed characters, Cortazar is not equipped to offer the solution for society's ills. He also stands quietly aside in Paris, unsure of the true path to a new reality, and advocating political revolution not for its own sake, but as a vehicle to a new state of being...