Literature Lessons. Julio Cortazar

Berkeley, California, autumn 1980. At the peak of his writing career and after many rejections, Julio Cortázar finally agrees to give a two-month course of lectures in the United States. As one might expect, these lectures were far from didactic, but rather conversations about literature, about his own experience as a writer. The topics of these lectures are very diverse: aspects of the fantastic story, musicality, humor, eroticism and play in literature, fantasy and realism, social literature and linguistic traps. Cortázar, already at the age when one takes stock, talks about his journey as a writer and analyzes his own work: how chronopes and such unsurpassed stories as “The Night of the Gory Faces” or “The Continuation of the Parks” came about; what is the essence of the novel “The Game of Classes” and how it was written, etc. Anyone who reads the meticulous and precise transcription of thirteen hours of tape recordings will see that the unwritten Cortázar is not far removed from the written Cortázar: the same skill, imagination, erudition, and intellectual honesty.