Literature Class, Berkeley 1980 - Softcover

Cortázar, Julio

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0811225348 ISBN 13: 9780811225342

Publisher: New Directions, 2017

Synopsis

A master class from the exhilarating writer Julio Cortázar

“I want you to know that I’m not a critic or theorist, which means that in my work I look for solutions as problems arise.” So begins the first of eight classes that the great Argentine writer Julio Cortázar delivered at UC Berkeley in 1980. These “classes” are as much reflections on Cortázar’s own writing career as they are about literature and the historical moment in which he lived. Covering such topics as “the writer’s path” (“while my aesthetic world view made me admire writers like Borges, I was able to open my eyes to the language of street slang, lunfardo...”) and “the fantastic” (“unbeknownst to me, the fantastic had become as acceptable, as possible and real, as the fact of eating soup at eight o’clock in the evening”), Literature Class provides the warm and personal experience of sitting in a room with the great author. As Joaquin Marco stated in El Cultural, “exploring this course is to dive into Cortázar designing his own creations.... Essential for anyone reading or studying Cortázar, cronopio or not!”

About this title

About the Author

Julio Cortázar (1914-1984), Argentine novelist, poet, essayist, and short-story writer, was born in Brussels, and moved permanently to France in 1951. Cortazar is now recognized as one of the century's major experimental writers, reflecting the influence of French surrealism, psychoanalysis, and his love of both photography and jazz, along with his strong commitment to revolutionary Latin American politics.

KATHERINE SILVER is an award-winning liter- ary translator and the codirector of the Banff International Literary Translation Centre (BILTC). Her translations include works by Ce´sar Aira, Horacio Castellanos Moya, Jose´ Emilio Pacheco, Elena Poniatowska, Jorge Franco, and Marti´n Ada´n, among others.

Review

“One of those books that radically shifted my thinking about the possibilities of narrative.”
- Christopher Higgs, Big Other

“Literature Class is a serious boon for Julio Cortázar fans. Delivered at the end of his life while visiting UC Berkeley, these eight lectures offer fresh insights into the mind of one of the 20th Century’s most vital writers.”
- Jeff Jackson, Fanzine

“"There's no question that Julio Cortázar is among the most revered Latin American writers of any age. In Literature Class, readers are treated to a series of talks the author gave at Berkeley circa 1980. They range from meditations on the writer's path to the elements of an effective short story. "I'm not a critic or theorist," he writes, "which means that in my work, I look for solutions as problems arise." While this may be true, it's hard to imagine anyone better suited to tackle the endless possibilities of literature and language itself."”
- Juan Vidal, NPR

“The consequent lectures―originally delivered in Spanish and translated adeptly by Katherine Silver―are erudite, intimate, charmingly fragmented, and anecdotal, covering a range of topics, from “Eroticism and Literature” to “The Realistic Short Story.””
- Dustin Illingworth, The Atlantic

“Based on the words spoken by Cortázar and his students, the class that he taught appears to be an interesting hybrid of Cortázar as tour guide of his body of work, and as mentor into the broader lessons about the qualities of fiction that resonated most with him.”
- The Culture Trip

“A first-class literary imagination.”
- The New York Times

“As Cortázar stresses throughout his talks, writing is rarely a pursuit of answers but, rather, about investigation―of the self, of one’s work, and of the world at large. The goal of the novel, Cortázar says, is to harmonize its formal and literal questions into a central, destabilizing quandary: 'Why are things like they are and not otherwise?”
- The New Yorker

“[T]he lectures, at times, do feel cobbled together―but in the best way, in the way of art that thrives in complexity and contradiction. They are made from pieces of Cortázar’s life, his writing, his experiences as a young writer in Argentina and an as exile in Paris, his deep engagement with literature and cinema and politics, and they show the mind of a writer at work, asking questions and unearthing new possibilities.”
- John Flynn-York, The Rumpus

“A glittering showcase for a daring talent―Julio Cortázar is a dazzler.”
- The San Francisco Chronicle

“Cortázar spoke of something more than novelty or progress―he spoke of the radically new and joyful nature of every instant, of the body, the memory and the imagination of men and women.”
- Carlos Fuentes

Edition details

• Publisher: New Directions
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 0811225348
• ISBN 13: 9780811225342
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 280