Word: cortazar
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...Some say Cortazar is moving into a more socially conscious phase--in A Manual he makes a political statement in his preface and includes revolutionary characters--but his main emphasis is still on esthetics. Unlike other South American writers such as Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Carlos Fuentes and Migel Angel Asturias, Cortazar does not concern himself with the social and political ills of his country...
...Manual is an anti-novel without a definable plot. Interspersed between chapters without numbers and of varying lengths, are news-clippings about the torture of Latin American revolutionaries and their terrorist endeavors. Cortazar builds the entire book around these visually super-imposed articles, which are being compiled for a scrapbook for Manuel, the child of a Screwery member. The collection serves as a guide to the beliefs of Manuel's parents...
...structure is gimmicky, but the contrivance works. The book ensnares the reader with its disjointed collage of witty literary references and snatches of absurd conversation. The characters may be political neophytes, but they are intelligent and believable--a far cry from Cortazar's previous two-dimensional protagonists...
...Cortazar has long been in the vanguard of contemporary Latin American authors who employ surrealist and experimental techniques. With his emphasis on fantasy and indigenous mythology, and his use of innovations in novelistic form, he attempts to assert his intellectual independence from Western literary traditions. Like his Argentine compatriot, Jorge Borges, Cortazar portrays a reality in which past, present and future exist simultaneously; a world where his characters are trapped in the labyrinth of modern society. Cortazar's two best-known works, the short story "Blow Up" (on which director Antonioni based his film) and the novel Hopscotch, exemplify...
...DOES CORTAZAR BELIEVE in what his exiled rebels are striving towards? One thinks not. He prefaces his novel with an indictment of Argentine military rule and a call to socialism, but he is too sophisticated to believe his characters' irresponsible lifestyle can save their nation. They lack a coherent ideology or strategy, and their leisurely french fries and ontological arguments are too removed from Argentine realities; they never discuss the country's brutal regime and economic inequalities. They experience revolutionary movements solely through newspaper clippings. Like the spiritually ship-wrecked "Club," each member of the "Screwery" struggles more with...