About this title: In the stories here— including "Blow Up," on which Antonioni based his film— Cortá zar explores the boundary where the everyday meets the mysterious.
Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Publisher: Collier
Date Published: 1971
Description: Good. BLOW-UP and Other Stories by Julio Cortazar. Collier, 1971. Binding: Mass Market PaperbackDust Jacket: . NOTES: 3rd Printing. Showing some exterior wear/creasing, contents are overall clean with no owner markings. Images available upon request. Please email us with any questions. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Pantheon
Date Published: 1985
ISBN-13:9780394728810ISBN:0394728815
Description: New. Brand New! Buy with confidence-your satisfaction is guaranteed at B-Logistics! Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. Please note that Expedited shipping is not available at this time. read more
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Random House Inc
Date Published: 1985-03-01
ISBN-13:9780394728810ISBN:0394728815
Description: NEW. Softcover. From an inventory that is 100% brand-new, 100% direct from the publishers' distribution channel. We carry NO pre-owned, NO remaindered. We pack in CARDBOARD to ensure the pristine quality is maintained. (Bubble-wrap alone is NOT sufficient to protect from USPS equipment. ) Guaranteed brand-NEW, protected with CARDBOARD, your satisfaction is guaranteed. BKLUVID: 9780394728810. read more
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Publisher: Collier
Date Published: 1968
Description: Good. Clean, solid softcover. First Collier Books printing. Covers rubbed to edges, name written to extreme upper edge of first page. All of our books are hand selected and are as described. Mylar protective sleeves are available. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Collier
Date Published: 1969
Description: Very Good. This paperback book has been read, and shows some light wear. Well preserved and readable though shows signs of age, with light wear on the cover, with inscription for previous owner written inside, and has a remainder mark. The cover shows some light lifting. Less than 25% of the pages have writing or underlining. Email sent when item shipped. We ship promptly in tear resistant mailers and promise you excellent professional customer service. Delivery confirmation available on all ... read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Random House Inc
Date Published: 1985
ISBN-13:9780394728810ISBN:0394728815
Description: New. A young girl spends her summer vacation in a country house where a tiger roams...A man reading a mystery finds out to late that he is the murderer's victim...In the stories collected here-including 'Blow-Up, ' on which Antonioni based his film-Juli... read more
"Maybe it isn't fair to review this since I only read the four stories that I have to read for class, but I'll go ahead. I think Cortazar should have written poetry, if he didn't. His language is absolutely arresting and beautiful, and many paragraphs, if lineated, would make great poems, or even prose poems. The problem I have is that the language is almost TOO intoxicating - these stories were frustrating for me because I kept getting lost in the microlevel of the words and thus losing important plot elements. It's an aesthetic thing, I'm sure - I think stories need both language AND clear plot to be able to fully work because that's what I write and what I like. But this was tough for me. My favorite piece I read was the title story - but even then, I think it could have been much more successful as a short short, whereas some of the shorter stories I read may have benefited from being longer. A strange read, but worth it to experience the deluge of exquisite phrases and words!"
"I am not the axolotl of a one trick Porteñan pony with half a tail in Paris. I am just a burro on a windy, rainy street, but I am not behind the glass or a disconnected mirror. There is a nineteenth century streetlamp next to me and it illuminates gold wisps of dust that disappear down the alleyway, unable to find your lace in its gardens or the childish ingenuity running your circles."
"Fantastic surrealist short stories. Favorite quote: "There was a time when I thought a lot about the axolotl. I went to see them in the aquarium in the Jardin des Plantes and remained there for hours looking at them, observing their immobility, their obscure movements. Now I am an axolotl.""
"The first story of Cortazar's that I ever read was "La Noche Boca Arriba", roughly translatable as "The Night Turned Upside Down". It creeped me out then, and it still creeps me out. As in many of Cortazar's stories, it revolves around the idea that the protagonist simultaneously inhabits two parallel realities, that beyond the "normal events" being described lies a far more terrible world ready to engulf the protagonist (for instance, the obsidian knife of the Aztec executioner-priest).
Or there's the opening paragraph of "axolotl": There was a time when I thought a great deal about the axolotls. I went to see them in the aquarium at the jardin des Plantes and stayed for hours watching them, observing their immobility, their faint movements. Now I am an axolotl.
Time and again in this collection of brilliantly original short stories, Cortazar pulls the rug out from under the reader. Isabel spends her summer vacation in a country house stalked by a tiger, a situation which she ultimately exploits to get revenge, and a measure of justice. A man sits in his study, reading a murder mystery in which he himself is the victim.
This collection, first published in 1967, contains translations of 14 of Cortazar's early short stories, as well as "The Pursuer", an exploration of a jazz musician's creative demons which the author dedicated to Charlie Parker. Though the translation is not particularly impressive, this volume does convey the energy, dislocation, and menace that is characteristic of Cortazar's stories.
These stories were simultaneously fun and disturbing to read. I highly recommend them."
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