Rating: 
Summary: Cortazar is extraordinary
Review: Jorge Luis Borges was arguably the greatest writer of the short story in Latin America. But it's interesting that he once compiled a list of his personal favorite books and put "Julio Cortazar, Stories" above all others. "Blow-Up" is as good a collection as any to read some extraordinary stories.
Rating:
Summary: Argentine in Paris
Review: Julio Cortazar is a revolutionary but one far from home and not a political revolutionary but one that roams the further reaches of the psyche, just beyond where civilization says it is safe to go. Every single one of his many short stories is worth reading(so, if available, get all of them). His novels I find too experimental and mired in his theories but in the short story he shines like very few others. Some of his best are told through a childs perspective and all of his shorter fictions in a way take you into that kind of place where wonder still outweighs any learned way of seeing "reality" which in Cortazar is always in quotes. Cortazar likes to take you out of your normal context and give you a whole new set of associations, a whole new world to walk in. His novels are difficult but his stories are not. They invite the best kinds of speculation but they can also be appreciated at a glance. Cortazar is reputed to have had a very large record collection, mostly jazz, in his Paris lair in the sixties. I think he is one of those authors who would have been very interesting to know. Hip to the way peoples perception of the world were changing at the time, but persistent in his personal quests which led him down many strange avenues. To this his stories will attest. A note: Cortazar is sometimes grouped in with Borges and there are some good reasons why but I prefer Cortazar. Both play games with logic but Cortazar pleases both the mind and the emotions. The effect is more subtle.
Rating:
Summary: Cortazar is brilliant
Review: Julio Cortazar is probably one of the best writers of short fiction! I found a collection of his writing by accident years ago while looking through the latin american writers (I was obsessed with Gabriel Garcia Marquez.) I think that anyone would find his haunting characters and facinating story lines to be some of the most compelling in modern literature. His stories are what I believe would happen if Ray bradbury were to write as beautifully and as mysteriously as J. D. Salinger.
Rating:
Summary: Exile as a State of Mind
Review: Julio Cortazar reminds me more of the late great Spanish film director, Luis Bunuel, one of the founding fathers of Surrealism, who once remarked that, when writing a film, he always aimed for whatever was most disturbing in any given situation. Similarly, Cortazar's stories are all constructed around a disturbing vision. In "The End of the Game," for instance, three children don bizarre costumes and assume attitudes for the passengers on the trains that zip by them. "Blow-Up" is very different from Antonioni's film. There is a menace in the interplay between the photographer, his unwitting subjects, and a third party who was watching both. My favorite story in the collection is "The Pursuer," a nakedly brilliant study of a black American Jazz musician and the critic who never quite understands the demons that give birth to the music. The story is dedicated to Ch. P., who I assume is Charley Parker. Cortazar's musician lives on the edge and is plagued by disturbing visions as he spirals down into a personal apocalypse. The critic, on the other hand, tries ineffectually to help the musician, but is more worried about what people will say about his latest study of the musician's work. Cortazar's stories take place in a kind of half-European, half-Latin Neverland. Born in Belgium of Argentinian parents, he spent most of his life in Europe. It is as if the author's self-exile gave birth to a demon of restlessness that possessed his characters. Although this is the first Cortazar I have read, it will not be the last.
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