Fantomas Versus the Multinational Vampires: An Attainable Utopia (Semiotext(e) / Native Agents)

Masterpiece of experimental writing from Cortazar! Fantomas is at turns informative, amusing, and mind-altering. Not at all where I would start with this author, but if you enjoy his work and haven't picked this one up yet (admittedly one of his most obscure titles) don't hesitate!

Back in the 1970s, the US edition of "Hopscotch" -- part of Avon's series of several dozen mass market paperback translations of major Latin American authors, a literary project unimaginable today -- featured on its cover a melancholy caricature of the author, Julio Cortázar. Maybe I wasn't alone in getting the impression that he was a depressing read. Decades later, when I finally sat down to read him, though, I discovered my big mistake: although his writing isn't typically optimistic, it's often incredibly funny.This book from 1975 is a great example: farcical even for Cortázar, but with a serious edge as well. The story, narrated in the first person, includes panels from an actual issue of a Mexican comic book featuring the anti-hero Fantomas. The comic's story line drew on Fantomas's friendship with "Julio, Octavio, Alberto and Susan" -- as in Cortázar, Paz, Moravia and Sontag, major late 20th Century authors much better known by the general public back then than they or writers of comparable quality are today. There's also a wonderful sequence of panels where Fantomas's "civilian" alter ego explains Bertolt Brecht to his socialite girlfriend, Ira von Fürstenberg (also a real-life person). The comic's plot revolves around a fanatic's scheme to destroy the world's literature, both by making books disappear and by physically threatening authors. (The full comic, issue 201 of "Fantomas, La amenaza elegante" [Fantomas, the elegant menace], is available online in Spanish from a blog called "mundofantomas;" it includes some additional enjoyable panels about Brecht, especially.)Somehow Cortázar transitions from his finding the comic book at the Brussels train station to his actually being friends with Fantomas. Eventually the comic's panels fall away and Cortázar the character is pulling Fantomas into the work real-life Cortázar was doing as part of the Second Russell Tribunal, which was investigating the brutality of several Latin American military regimes. The task is shown to be beyond even Fantomas's capabilities. The real Tribunal's findings are included as an appendix to the book.One can criticise some aspects of Cortázar's political engagement as naïve: e.g., his admiration for the Cuban Revolution, without acknowledging its harsh treatment of dissidents. But the military brutality in Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil and elsewhere that he decried was real. In any case, he's never so shrill about politics as to lose his self-deprecating sense of humor, such as in relating his unsuccessful attempts to attract a blonde sitting across from him in his train compartment, or how he paced around in his apartment "smoking in the manner one learns from suspense films."Given the book's genre-bending storytelling, it's no wonder this translation has been published through Semiotext(e), a literary theory journal. It's too bad the price is relatively steep for such a slim book. My copy of "Hopscotch," printed in 1975 when an oil crisis was inflating the cost of ink, had a cover price of just $2.95; that comes out to under $12 in today's dollars, for which you got 570 pages, not 87. But considering how much I enjoyed the book compared to, say, some movies I've paid to see in theaters, I didn't regret the bargain.

Vivid writing and a perfect way to pass the time day dreaming about your Left views on a short plane ride.

buscaba la versión en español , pero es una muy buena opción

Todo admirador de Julio C debería de tenerlo en su librero.