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Bestiary
"The common reality," writes Alberto Manguel in his Introduction, "that attached itself to Cortazar like a second skin - the political struggles, the difficult affairs of the heart, the messy business of literature with its passion for novelty and gossip - will quietly fade, and what will remain is the shining teller of uncanny tales, tales that hold a delicate balance between the unspeakable and that which must be told, between the daily horrors of which we appear to be capable and the magical events with which we are gifted every night in the labyrinthine recesses of the mind." The present volume includes many stories never previously published in English; it aims to provide a fully representative selection of Cortazar's genius as a short story writer, a genius that has been celebrated all over the world since the author's death in 1984.
340 pages, Paperback
Published June 18, 1998
About the author
Julio Cortázar
729 books7,736 followersJulio Cortázar, born Julio Florencio Cortázar Descotte, was an Argentine author of novels and short stories. He influenced an entire generation of Latin American writers from Mexico to Argentina, and most of his best-known work was written in France, where he established himself in 1951.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 34 reviews
October 13, 2024
Just 10 days shy of a year later, and I’ve finally finished reading! I’ll be taking this opportunity to reiterate that this novel has the absolute worst sized font. Densely packaged, pt. 11 sized font over the course of 350+ pages is not viable when the content is already intricate in itself. Otherwise, a majority of the stories are extremely interesting, and all are characteristically well-written. Cortazar’s fantastical ideas of horror make for great October reading; I’ll probably be thinking about ‘Instructions for John Howell’ for the rest of my life.
February 28, 2020
All fires the fire indeed. *****
A collection of 35 stories not to be confused with the shorter editions under this grouping.
I found these short stories too intense and enjoyable to read back to back. I was tempted to skip the last few just to know they were there to come back to. "Press Clippings" was an intensely dark tale that cast a shadow on all previous stories.
A collection of 35 stories not to be confused with the shorter editions under this grouping.
I found these short stories too intense and enjoyable to read back to back. I was tempted to skip the last few just to know they were there to come back to. "Press Clippings" was an intensely dark tale that cast a shadow on all previous stories.
June 7, 2020
One of the best collections of short stories I have ever read.
Many of these stories have brilliant intellectual depths but they flow easily and smoothly in a prose that is very different indeed from the glacial prose of Borges, an author that Cortázar is often paired with. Most stories unfold gradually, organically, and they don't allow themselves to be dominated by the core concept that will surely spring a remarkable surprise at the end. Cortázar is extremely good with surprise endings: the twist, wholly unexpected yet absolutely in tune with the inner logic of the story, that suddenly appears in the final few seconds of the reading of the text.
So many of the stories in this book are excellent that it is difficult to chose a favourite but I suppose I would have to pick 'The Southern Thruway', which is a remarkable tale about the fragility of civilisation and modern society. It reminded me strongly of the work of J.G. Ballard and J. M. G. Le Clézio but with an extra dimension that I can't quite articulate. Cortázar's prose is never cold or alienating or 'objective'. It is warm and human, even when exploring strange situations that grow more and more bizarre as the action progresses.
Other personal highlights, in no especial order, include 'The School at Night'. 'Tara', 'The Gates of Heaven', 'A Yellow Flower'. 'Axolotl' and 'Instructions for John Howell', but there wasn't a bad story in the collection. I am looking forward to reading his novel Hopscotch next.
Many of these stories have brilliant intellectual depths but they flow easily and smoothly in a prose that is very different indeed from the glacial prose of Borges, an author that Cortázar is often paired with. Most stories unfold gradually, organically, and they don't allow themselves to be dominated by the core concept that will surely spring a remarkable surprise at the end. Cortázar is extremely good with surprise endings: the twist, wholly unexpected yet absolutely in tune with the inner logic of the story, that suddenly appears in the final few seconds of the reading of the text.
So many of the stories in this book are excellent that it is difficult to chose a favourite but I suppose I would have to pick 'The Southern Thruway', which is a remarkable tale about the fragility of civilisation and modern society. It reminded me strongly of the work of J.G. Ballard and J. M. G. Le Clézio but with an extra dimension that I can't quite articulate. Cortázar's prose is never cold or alienating or 'objective'. It is warm and human, even when exploring strange situations that grow more and more bizarre as the action progresses.
Other personal highlights, in no especial order, include 'The School at Night'. 'Tara', 'The Gates of Heaven', 'A Yellow Flower'. 'Axolotl' and 'Instructions for John Howell', but there wasn't a bad story in the collection. I am looking forward to reading his novel Hopscotch next.
December 23, 2017
I wouldn't confess my secret either.
If Jorge Luis Borges is the literary scientist who excels at exhibiting impossible geometries in miniature, Julio Cortázar is the long-winded, mussy-haired standup act with something direly unsettling about each of his stories, something you really want to pin down, but—no matter how closely you listen—you never will.
For those unfamiliar with Borges, perhaps I should be playing on a comparison with another short-piece writer closer to the Western ear who was also Cortázar's contemporary: E. B. White.
Surprised?
Julio Cortázar (1914–1984) was an Argentine writer, and part of the flourishing Latin American literary scene of the 50s and 60s.
E. B. White (1899–1985) was na American writer, known for his contributions to the The New Yorker all of which are firmly grounded in reality. (Although, of course, there's his fiction for children, such as Charlotte's Web.) My literary-minded readers will know him for the The Elements of Style writing manual that contains such classical advice as Omit needless words, Be clear, and Place yourself in the background.
Now for the comparison.
Within the bastion of brilliant writing, Cortázar is the polar opposite of White.
Let me spell that out:
1. Cortázar does not omit needless words,
2. Cortázar is not clear,
3. Cortázar does not place himself (or, rather, the narrator) in the background.
The first point speaks of Cortázar’s style: easygoing, seemingly unedited, discursive, transferring meaning through hints and through osmosis rather than at the edge of a blade. However, he doesn’t resort to a wordiness common to the preceding ages, such as the fin de siècle cloying headiness brought upon by (the just demonstrated type of) adjectival pile-up. Also, the French conte cruel, which explores similar phenomena, namely the “cruel” twists of fate (albeit usually socially distasteful, grotesque, appalling, bizarre), does so either explicitly or opaquely, but it doesn’t leave you wondering what just happened. Your curiosity is extinguished because you are satisfied, or because you don't care. Not with Cortázar.
The second point speaks of Cortázar’s subject matter: he treats the impossibly, subtly nightmarish that gets under your skin without you knowing why. It is ill-defined, indefinite, indescribably balanced on the boundaries of perception. Some of his stories could be called Dahlesque (or indeed some of Roald Dahl’s stories, like Royal Jelly , come close to what is found in Cortázar’s Bestiary), but where Dahl gives you the satisfaction of a clear, if distinctly disturbing ending, Cortázar usually does not. Like in Borges’s There Are More Things, you are left wondering what you would have seen had the camera panned the other way.
The third point is arguably the hardest to transfer from non-fiction to fiction. I’ll make the transference anyway: in fiction, place yourself in the background means leave the narrative surface unbroken. In other words, let the reader skate over all the mechanisms, issues, trickery that underly successful fiction; let them enjoy the scenery. Cracks in the narrative surface, hills and ravines, narrative surfaces within narrative surfaces, warped reflections and startling linguistic legerdemain are the domain of magical realism and metafiction. Cortázar offers one or both admirably.
Aren't you yearning to find out how the rabbit conclave ends?
I have never described this to you before, not so much, I don’t think, from the lack of truthfulness as that, just naturally, one is not going to explain to people at large that from time to time one vomits up a small rabbit.
—Letter of a Young Lady in Paris
If Jorge Luis Borges is the literary scientist who excels at exhibiting impossible geometries in miniature, Julio Cortázar is the long-winded, mussy-haired standup act with something direly unsettling about each of his stories, something you really want to pin down, but—no matter how closely you listen—you never will.
When I feel that I’m going to bring up a rabbit, I put two fingers in my mouth like an open pincer, and I wait to feel the lukewarm fluff rise in my throat …
For those unfamiliar with Borges, perhaps I should be playing on a comparison with another short-piece writer closer to the Western ear who was also Cortázar's contemporary: E. B. White.
Surprised?
Julio Cortázar (1914–1984) was an Argentine writer, and part of the flourishing Latin American literary scene of the 50s and 60s.
E. B. White (1899–1985) was na American writer, known for his contributions to the The New Yorker all of which are firmly grounded in reality. (Although, of course, there's his fiction for children, such as Charlotte's Web.) My literary-minded readers will know him for the The Elements of Style writing manual that contains such classical advice as Omit needless words, Be clear, and Place yourself in the background.
Now for the comparison.
Within the bastion of brilliant writing, Cortázar is the polar opposite of White.
Let me spell that out:
1. Cortázar does not omit needless words,
2. Cortázar is not clear,
3. Cortázar does not place himself (or, rather, the narrator) in the background.
The first point speaks of Cortázar’s style: easygoing, seemingly unedited, discursive, transferring meaning through hints and through osmosis rather than at the edge of a blade. However, he doesn’t resort to a wordiness common to the preceding ages, such as the fin de siècle cloying headiness brought upon by (the just demonstrated type of) adjectival pile-up. Also, the French conte cruel, which explores similar phenomena, namely the “cruel” twists of fate (albeit usually socially distasteful, grotesque, appalling, bizarre), does so either explicitly or opaquely, but it doesn’t leave you wondering what just happened. Your curiosity is extinguished because you are satisfied, or because you don't care. Not with Cortázar.
The second point speaks of Cortázar’s subject matter: he treats the impossibly, subtly nightmarish that gets under your skin without you knowing why. It is ill-defined, indefinite, indescribably balanced on the boundaries of perception. Some of his stories could be called Dahlesque (or indeed some of Roald Dahl’s stories, like Royal Jelly , come close to what is found in Cortázar’s Bestiary), but where Dahl gives you the satisfaction of a clear, if distinctly disturbing ending, Cortázar usually does not. Like in Borges’s There Are More Things, you are left wondering what you would have seen had the camera panned the other way.
The third point is arguably the hardest to transfer from non-fiction to fiction. I’ll make the transference anyway: in fiction, place yourself in the background means leave the narrative surface unbroken. In other words, let the reader skate over all the mechanisms, issues, trickery that underly successful fiction; let them enjoy the scenery. Cracks in the narrative surface, hills and ravines, narrative surfaces within narrative surfaces, warped reflections and startling linguistic legerdemain are the domain of magical realism and metafiction. Cortázar offers one or both admirably.
(it’s almost lovely to see how they like to stand on their hind legs, nostalgia for that so-distant humanity, perhaps an imitation of their god walking about and looking at them darkly; besides which, you will have observed — when you were a baby, perhaps — that you can put a bunny in the corner against the wall like a punishment, and he’ll stand there, paws against the wall and very quiet, for hours and hours)
Aren't you yearning to find out how the rabbit conclave ends?
January 24, 2021
Cortázar's Bestiary is an anthology of short stories, originally written in Spanish and transcribed over the time by many translators.
Cortázar doesn't ease you into his stories. He doesn't coddle you or offer you the luxury of familiarity. He lures you in and suddenly you find yourself at the edge of an abyss, happily falling over just to see how far it goes. Every story has something inhuman about it. A looming presence, a beast, a terrible illusion, some out of grasp, that slips the moment you close your fingers around it. Like those abstract arts which only make sense from afar. Like a big jigsaw puzzle with lost pieces.
At the end of each story I had to stop. I paced around, trying to make sense what I've just read, pushed the thoughts in a corner planning to revisit later and picked up the book again. In one story a young man vomits bunnies, one story has four perspectives of two people.
".. perhaps even now, but no, not now - in the elevator then, or coming into the building; it's not important now where, if the when is now, if it can happen in any now of those that are left to me."
If I could, I would have talked about each story separately. But here, let me tell you about the namesake of the book, 'Bestiary'.
"..she read no smoking, spitting is forbidden by law, seating capacity 42 passengers, they were passing through Banfield at top speed, vavooom! country more country more country intermingled with the taste of Milky Way and the menthol drops."
A little girl recounts her summer days, when she is invited to visit someone's home. Maybe a family friend or a relative. There's a tiger in the house she never sees. It prowls the rooms. Could it be a pet if everyone stays out of its way? Kid rapes Rema every night which Luis knows but does nothing about. The anthill in her room becomes sentient in the dark. One day that little girl sends Kid in the tiger's room. Now tell me, who is the beast?
Bizzare. Surreal. Disturbing. Weird. Fascinating. Remarkable. This is how I portray Cortázar's works. Maybe you will find another set of words to describe what you think. Because when Cortázar leaves you to fend off his beasts it's up to you what you think of them.
Cortázar doesn't ease you into his stories. He doesn't coddle you or offer you the luxury of familiarity. He lures you in and suddenly you find yourself at the edge of an abyss, happily falling over just to see how far it goes. Every story has something inhuman about it. A looming presence, a beast, a terrible illusion, some out of grasp, that slips the moment you close your fingers around it. Like those abstract arts which only make sense from afar. Like a big jigsaw puzzle with lost pieces.
At the end of each story I had to stop. I paced around, trying to make sense what I've just read, pushed the thoughts in a corner planning to revisit later and picked up the book again. In one story a young man vomits bunnies, one story has four perspectives of two people.
".. perhaps even now, but no, not now - in the elevator then, or coming into the building; it's not important now where, if the when is now, if it can happen in any now of those that are left to me."
If I could, I would have talked about each story separately. But here, let me tell you about the namesake of the book, 'Bestiary'.
"..she read no smoking, spitting is forbidden by law, seating capacity 42 passengers, they were passing through Banfield at top speed, vavooom! country more country more country intermingled with the taste of Milky Way and the menthol drops."
A little girl recounts her summer days, when she is invited to visit someone's home. Maybe a family friend or a relative. There's a tiger in the house she never sees. It prowls the rooms. Could it be a pet if everyone stays out of its way? Kid rapes Rema every night which Luis knows but does nothing about. The anthill in her room becomes sentient in the dark. One day that little girl sends Kid in the tiger's room. Now tell me, who is the beast?
Bizzare. Surreal. Disturbing. Weird. Fascinating. Remarkable. This is how I portray Cortázar's works. Maybe you will find another set of words to describe what you think. Because when Cortázar leaves you to fend off his beasts it's up to you what you think of them.
January 25, 2026
კორტასარის მოთხრობებზე არ უნდა ისაუბრო. უბრალოდ უნდა იკითხო და ჩაიძირო მის განუმეორებელ სამყაროში.
July 27, 2026
4.5/5
LOVED THIS! Bestiary is such an excellent collection of short stories, crammed with gems of such range. What unites these stories is how completely they inhabit and encapsulate their space, whether it be Paris or Buenos Aires, and how utterly Argentinian they are (beyond just mate).
Cortázar employs such a hilariously cynical, sarcastic, and witty humour that really lends itself to the uncanny, absurd, and strangeness of his stories. Beneath this festers a pervasive but unplaceable sense of unease that progresses to assume a really sinister and disturbing tone by the end, ever darkening in accordance with the chronology of Argentina’s society under the National Reorganization Process. There is a lot left unsaid, unexplained and deliberately vague; many stories end with a lack of resolve and a lingering discomfort.
Set against the backdrop of military rule and juntas that even when not explicitly mentioned permeate every story with a pervasive and parasitic presence. Indirectly addressed until page 230, ‘we were then under military dictatorship in Argentina, one more in the endless series,’ from then on its as if a knife has been pulled from its wound and the body won’t cease bleeding. This continental struggle forms the core of stories like Apocalypse at Solentiname - a roll of film documenting a trip to an artist community in Nicaragua infiltrated by unexplained images of graphic military violence, torture, bloodied dismembered bodies, and rape against civilians, alongside Press Clippings - a writer tasked with creating the descriptions for a catalogue of sculptures based on the accounts of political dissidents and their family who were killed in military custody. The section on the seeming hopelessness and pointlessness of political action when it amounts to nothing or even has adverse effects and how wrong and frivolous it seems to be concerned with creating is horribly personally apt, the artist’s line ‘you can see all this is worth nothing’ placated quite perfectly with ‘don’t start up with the autotorture, the real kind is quite enough, I think.’ The story’s continuation into the writer committing an act of extreme violence themselves and the ethics of reactionary and retaliatory violence in a violent society is something that deserves a whole paper in its own right - one I’m definitely not capable of writing. It’s sad reading this as Milei’s presidency runs Argentina to ruins once again and history once again seems doomed to repeat itself. In spite of this, the heaviness of these stories is balanced by the novelty of a four page story consisting entirely of a man’s struggle to put his jumper on and that of a man who becomes so obsessed with axolotls that he transfers his conscience into one’s body, among others.
It’s difficult to separate Cortázar’s political involvement from his writing and I worry I’m being reductive or oversimplistic in my interpretations of more or less all of his stories as metaphors for South America’s military juntas, especially those whose meanings are more ambiguous.
Cortazar’s writing is so innately human, unbelievably perceptive in his understanding of the utmost subtleties of human existence captured so well in descriptions, often in the simplest of lines. 'I was about to do it, and now I'm only one of many who wonder why at some point they didn't do what they felt like doing.' This feels plucked from my very own mind like an inevitable fact of life that lies inarticulate beneath consciousness and yet it's simultaneously so unremarkable. 'I'm possessed by a great desire to see old friends again, friends from whom I've been distanced by the myriad reasons that life increasingly forces upon us.' WOAH.
Cortázar excels at unique similes and metaphors, especially animal related ones also used very allegorically at the forefront (literally! :p) of stories including the vomit bunnies in Letter to a Young Lady in Paris, the ants in Bestiary, and the horse in Summer (somehow the most ominous presence of them all).
A selection of my favourites:
'stupid and open-mouthed as a fish'
'drinking soda-water like a thirsty camel'
'the heat, the humidity and the excitement had turned most of the listeners into sad and sweaty lobsters'
'you could hear them [instruments] crunch and crack like large brown cockroaches.'
Great stuff.
The dialogue in A Place Named Kindberg with its unusual grammar is paced in a way that flows so well. There are many parallels and stories that are vaguely reminiscent of others like The Other Heaven, Throat of a Black Kitten, and The Faces of the Medal (omg is this one punishing) as an impasse between lovers, but they are all so distinct it never strays into repetition.
Of the 35 there are two stories I must discuss individually.
- The Western Thruway (!!!!!)
A seemingly endless traffic jam on the outskirts of Paris on a Sunday evening and continues for weeks assumes a state of purgatory marked by waiting, uncertainty, helplessness, entrapment, delay, and the inescapability of it all. I always love the premise of strangers thrust together through chance circumstance and the way in which social order and privilege become redundant. A collective is formed, a duty of care administered without complaint or expectation in a way that it only seems to in times of survival. Kind of applied anarchy in action, perchance...
Through the discomfort, dirt, and struggle of it all there is a lot of beauty in the multigenerational community that is formed, the resignation to simplicity, and the romance that unfolds, silently moving between cars, tender in its unspokenness. Time becomes meaningless and ambiguous, the extent of its passing conveyed so well only through the extremities of weather they endure - sweating on the melting asphalt at night to tearing up leather upholstery to make clothes, it’s as if whole seasons pass before them. Cars really become their own climates. None of the characters are ever named, their vehicles instead taking place of personage.
The ending is what makes it. As the jam finally ends and the traffic dissolves the unnamed narrator's desperation as he sees their whole makeshift world slip, how he searches for the girl in the Dauphine as her car slides out of view, lanes moving independently, the whole future he'd envisioned they’d have disappearing, knowing he'll never see her again, how he clings to hold it all for just a moment longer, and the impossibility of it all is devastating.
I also love the way contradicting rumours and gossip spread and how in the end we never discover the cause of the monumental jam because, well, why does it even matter?
Fun fact! The longest (duration) traffic jam ever recorded lasted 12 days in 2010 on the China National Highway 110. Decades after Cortázar wrote this story the longest (distance) jam in history stretched 109 miles from Lyon to Paris in 1980. It's like he knew...
Think about this endlessly - absolutely a bit of me. Love! Love! Love! Perfect ★★★★★ 10/10
- The Gates of Heaven
Also adored this. Until the Western Thruway I didn't think any story in the collection could marvel it. I'm like a moth to a flame when it comes to grief so naturally, I found this extremely touching. I think its success is owed to the depiction of the bereaved Mauro from an outside perspective that captures things that just wouldn’t be possible through a first-person narrative. I feel obliged to write through quotes here because there's no way I can relay the level of poetry and sensitivity in my own words. The narrator observes Mauro 'crying openly like any sane animal in this world’ and 'the phrases, that sputtering of stupidities with his whole life inside them.'
His recurrent surprise at not seeing her, not feeling her, like she dies again every time he expects it and finds only its absence. '"I have her here" and the gesture of driving his forefinger into the center of his chest as though he were indicating where a pain was, or a medal.' One of the saddest things I've ever read. The idea that Celina never really belonged to the world Mauro brought her into, grateful though she was. How Mauro goes searching for her apparition in the same bar in which they met, the story ending as the narrator observes him ‘get up and stagger across the floor like a drunk […] knowing he was wasting his time, that he would come back, tired and thirsty, not having found the gates of heaven among all that smoke and all those people.' Bruh. What more can I say.
Very sincere, very earnest, very mortal. One of my favourite depictions of loss.
Other highlights include In the Afternoon, Omnibus, and After-Dinner Conversation. I could write screeds more about each story, but this has taken a stupid long time to write and frankly I'm bored of it now. Also just read it, it’s worth it – source? trust me bro. I also had to rewrite a slightly shittier version of this all from memory because it never saved so that's made me want to die a bit. ❤️
I also wish I could upload a photo of my copy because wow I’ve never abused a book so badly. It doesn't even have a cover anymore #staygatekeeping. Poor form on my behalf... this does not represent me.
LOVED THIS! Bestiary is such an excellent collection of short stories, crammed with gems of such range. What unites these stories is how completely they inhabit and encapsulate their space, whether it be Paris or Buenos Aires, and how utterly Argentinian they are (beyond just mate).
Cortázar employs such a hilariously cynical, sarcastic, and witty humour that really lends itself to the uncanny, absurd, and strangeness of his stories. Beneath this festers a pervasive but unplaceable sense of unease that progresses to assume a really sinister and disturbing tone by the end, ever darkening in accordance with the chronology of Argentina’s society under the National Reorganization Process. There is a lot left unsaid, unexplained and deliberately vague; many stories end with a lack of resolve and a lingering discomfort.
Set against the backdrop of military rule and juntas that even when not explicitly mentioned permeate every story with a pervasive and parasitic presence. Indirectly addressed until page 230, ‘we were then under military dictatorship in Argentina, one more in the endless series,’ from then on its as if a knife has been pulled from its wound and the body won’t cease bleeding. This continental struggle forms the core of stories like Apocalypse at Solentiname - a roll of film documenting a trip to an artist community in Nicaragua infiltrated by unexplained images of graphic military violence, torture, bloodied dismembered bodies, and rape against civilians, alongside Press Clippings - a writer tasked with creating the descriptions for a catalogue of sculptures based on the accounts of political dissidents and their family who were killed in military custody. The section on the seeming hopelessness and pointlessness of political action when it amounts to nothing or even has adverse effects and how wrong and frivolous it seems to be concerned with creating is horribly personally apt, the artist’s line ‘you can see all this is worth nothing’ placated quite perfectly with ‘don’t start up with the autotorture, the real kind is quite enough, I think.’ The story’s continuation into the writer committing an act of extreme violence themselves and the ethics of reactionary and retaliatory violence in a violent society is something that deserves a whole paper in its own right - one I’m definitely not capable of writing. It’s sad reading this as Milei’s presidency runs Argentina to ruins once again and history once again seems doomed to repeat itself. In spite of this, the heaviness of these stories is balanced by the novelty of a four page story consisting entirely of a man’s struggle to put his jumper on and that of a man who becomes so obsessed with axolotls that he transfers his conscience into one’s body, among others.
It’s difficult to separate Cortázar’s political involvement from his writing and I worry I’m being reductive or oversimplistic in my interpretations of more or less all of his stories as metaphors for South America’s military juntas, especially those whose meanings are more ambiguous.
Cortazar’s writing is so innately human, unbelievably perceptive in his understanding of the utmost subtleties of human existence captured so well in descriptions, often in the simplest of lines. 'I was about to do it, and now I'm only one of many who wonder why at some point they didn't do what they felt like doing.' This feels plucked from my very own mind like an inevitable fact of life that lies inarticulate beneath consciousness and yet it's simultaneously so unremarkable. 'I'm possessed by a great desire to see old friends again, friends from whom I've been distanced by the myriad reasons that life increasingly forces upon us.' WOAH.
Cortázar excels at unique similes and metaphors, especially animal related ones also used very allegorically at the forefront (literally! :p) of stories including the vomit bunnies in Letter to a Young Lady in Paris, the ants in Bestiary, and the horse in Summer (somehow the most ominous presence of them all).
A selection of my favourites:
'stupid and open-mouthed as a fish'
'drinking soda-water like a thirsty camel'
'the heat, the humidity and the excitement had turned most of the listeners into sad and sweaty lobsters'
'you could hear them [instruments] crunch and crack like large brown cockroaches.'
Great stuff.
The dialogue in A Place Named Kindberg with its unusual grammar is paced in a way that flows so well. There are many parallels and stories that are vaguely reminiscent of others like The Other Heaven, Throat of a Black Kitten, and The Faces of the Medal (omg is this one punishing) as an impasse between lovers, but they are all so distinct it never strays into repetition.
Of the 35 there are two stories I must discuss individually.
- The Western Thruway (!!!!!)
A seemingly endless traffic jam on the outskirts of Paris on a Sunday evening and continues for weeks assumes a state of purgatory marked by waiting, uncertainty, helplessness, entrapment, delay, and the inescapability of it all. I always love the premise of strangers thrust together through chance circumstance and the way in which social order and privilege become redundant. A collective is formed, a duty of care administered without complaint or expectation in a way that it only seems to in times of survival. Kind of applied anarchy in action, perchance...
Through the discomfort, dirt, and struggle of it all there is a lot of beauty in the multigenerational community that is formed, the resignation to simplicity, and the romance that unfolds, silently moving between cars, tender in its unspokenness. Time becomes meaningless and ambiguous, the extent of its passing conveyed so well only through the extremities of weather they endure - sweating on the melting asphalt at night to tearing up leather upholstery to make clothes, it’s as if whole seasons pass before them. Cars really become their own climates. None of the characters are ever named, their vehicles instead taking place of personage.
The ending is what makes it. As the jam finally ends and the traffic dissolves the unnamed narrator's desperation as he sees their whole makeshift world slip, how he searches for the girl in the Dauphine as her car slides out of view, lanes moving independently, the whole future he'd envisioned they’d have disappearing, knowing he'll never see her again, how he clings to hold it all for just a moment longer, and the impossibility of it all is devastating.
I also love the way contradicting rumours and gossip spread and how in the end we never discover the cause of the monumental jam because, well, why does it even matter?
Fun fact! The longest (duration) traffic jam ever recorded lasted 12 days in 2010 on the China National Highway 110. Decades after Cortázar wrote this story the longest (distance) jam in history stretched 109 miles from Lyon to Paris in 1980. It's like he knew...
Think about this endlessly - absolutely a bit of me. Love! Love! Love! Perfect ★★★★★ 10/10
- The Gates of Heaven
Also adored this. Until the Western Thruway I didn't think any story in the collection could marvel it. I'm like a moth to a flame when it comes to grief so naturally, I found this extremely touching. I think its success is owed to the depiction of the bereaved Mauro from an outside perspective that captures things that just wouldn’t be possible through a first-person narrative. I feel obliged to write through quotes here because there's no way I can relay the level of poetry and sensitivity in my own words. The narrator observes Mauro 'crying openly like any sane animal in this world’ and 'the phrases, that sputtering of stupidities with his whole life inside them.'
His recurrent surprise at not seeing her, not feeling her, like she dies again every time he expects it and finds only its absence. '"I have her here" and the gesture of driving his forefinger into the center of his chest as though he were indicating where a pain was, or a medal.' One of the saddest things I've ever read. The idea that Celina never really belonged to the world Mauro brought her into, grateful though she was. How Mauro goes searching for her apparition in the same bar in which they met, the story ending as the narrator observes him ‘get up and stagger across the floor like a drunk […] knowing he was wasting his time, that he would come back, tired and thirsty, not having found the gates of heaven among all that smoke and all those people.' Bruh. What more can I say.
Very sincere, very earnest, very mortal. One of my favourite depictions of loss.
Other highlights include In the Afternoon, Omnibus, and After-Dinner Conversation. I could write screeds more about each story, but this has taken a stupid long time to write and frankly I'm bored of it now. Also just read it, it’s worth it – source? trust me bro. I also had to rewrite a slightly shittier version of this all from memory because it never saved so that's made me want to die a bit. ❤️
I also wish I could upload a photo of my copy because wow I’ve never abused a book so badly. It doesn't even have a cover anymore #staygatekeeping. Poor form on my behalf... this does not represent me.
August 4, 2025
I can't even begin to express how accomplished I feel for finally finishing this book. I've been chopping away at it since April. Sure, it's a bit bigger of a short story collection but that's still not a normal time frame for me. The only other collection that I have been fighting similarly is Edgar Allan Poe's Collected Works. Maybe not the worst comparison: both can be wordy, were highly influential and are often cited as Horror writers but when you dig through the mud there's actually a lot of genres.
And I was in the mud, I was on a war path to defeat Cortázar. That's not how reading should feel like but that's what this turned into, a battle of the wills: would I persist or would his run on sentences and paragraphs break me? He has a lot of those. But if I consistently wouldn't have liked his style, I wouldn't have gone through a 300+ pages collection, I do dnf if something doesn't seem worth my time. The problem is when Cortázar was good he was incredibly good, even outstanding. When he bored me I could barely get through the story (I dnf'd a few), and I never knew what the next story would be like. 35 is a lot of stories. This collection actually seems to combine several shorter collections of his which might explain some of the unevenness.
In his best moments her reminds me so much of Shirley Jackson (this actually made me realize that Jackson's slightly unique style within the US Horror scene is a more common style in South American Horror, other writers like Mariana Enriquez also evoked Jackson vibes for me). There are brilliant concepts in here and some of them are also brilliantly executed. But there are so many stories that were pure blah to me. I don't think his style technically is considered stream-of-consciousness but it can read a lot like it. Long, winding thoughts in long meandering sentences; a block of words covering a whole page. He can be so exhausting, I often zoned out in the middle of one of those long running paragraphs to realize I had to start over. This might be a me thing but I was overwhelmed with his walls of words and convoluted expressions. But when a story was good... It was intoxicating and carried me through the trenches. When I started this I thought I had found a new favorite writer, the first 3 stories are absolute wonders.
What also needs to be said is that he is definitely a writer of his time when it comes the depiction of women, and yes, I mean that in the bad way. One thing is that they often were described as weak and in need of protection, you know the expected slightly machismo attitude. But without exception each of the sex scenes or generalyl sexual encounters made me uncomfortable, rape occurs a couple of times loaded with different symbolism and in my opinion not always well handled.
What does that all mean now? It at least means I did not regret reading this but no, he is not a new favorite. I don't understand how one writer can simultaneously be so fascinating and so frustrating. There were a lot of 1* here but I'll give you my list of gems in case you ever stumble onto this book and maybe want a shorter journey than mine:
My Top 8:
8) In the Afternoon
7) The Maenades
6) A Leg of the Journey
5) Tara
4) House Taken Over
3) Letter to a Young Lady in Paris
2) Omnibus
1) The Southern Thruway
2.5*
And I was in the mud, I was on a war path to defeat Cortázar. That's not how reading should feel like but that's what this turned into, a battle of the wills: would I persist or would his run on sentences and paragraphs break me? He has a lot of those. But if I consistently wouldn't have liked his style, I wouldn't have gone through a 300+ pages collection, I do dnf if something doesn't seem worth my time. The problem is when Cortázar was good he was incredibly good, even outstanding. When he bored me I could barely get through the story (I dnf'd a few), and I never knew what the next story would be like. 35 is a lot of stories. This collection actually seems to combine several shorter collections of his which might explain some of the unevenness.
In his best moments her reminds me so much of Shirley Jackson (this actually made me realize that Jackson's slightly unique style within the US Horror scene is a more common style in South American Horror, other writers like Mariana Enriquez also evoked Jackson vibes for me). There are brilliant concepts in here and some of them are also brilliantly executed. But there are so many stories that were pure blah to me. I don't think his style technically is considered stream-of-consciousness but it can read a lot like it. Long, winding thoughts in long meandering sentences; a block of words covering a whole page. He can be so exhausting, I often zoned out in the middle of one of those long running paragraphs to realize I had to start over. This might be a me thing but I was overwhelmed with his walls of words and convoluted expressions. But when a story was good... It was intoxicating and carried me through the trenches. When I started this I thought I had found a new favorite writer, the first 3 stories are absolute wonders.
What also needs to be said is that he is definitely a writer of his time when it comes the depiction of women, and yes, I mean that in the bad way. One thing is that they often were described as weak and in need of protection, you know the expected slightly machismo attitude. But without exception each of the sex scenes or generalyl sexual encounters made me uncomfortable, rape occurs a couple of times loaded with different symbolism and in my opinion not always well handled.
What does that all mean now? It at least means I did not regret reading this but no, he is not a new favorite. I don't understand how one writer can simultaneously be so fascinating and so frustrating. There were a lot of 1* here but I'll give you my list of gems in case you ever stumble onto this book and maybe want a shorter journey than mine:
My Top 8:
8) In the Afternoon
7) The Maenades
6) A Leg of the Journey
5) Tara
4) House Taken Over
3) Letter to a Young Lady in Paris
2) Omnibus
1) The Southern Thruway
2.5*
April 27, 2021
No wonder, he is known as a master story-teller, kept me engrossed!
October 25, 2022
Cortazar is exhausting, not reading him again for 10 years
Did Not Finish
October 20, 2026The text is just so teeny it's really hard for me to read honestly. I'll find another way to read Cortazar's most famous short stories but this format ain't it.
June 29, 2026
this was just right up my alley. i love creepy south american magical realism and these stories are perfect for the summer heat
however this book has the worst sized font ever which made it a struggle to read, especially considering how dense and heavy the content was
however this book has the worst sized font ever which made it a struggle to read, especially considering how dense and heavy the content was
December 28, 2024
4.5. Brilliant, brilliant arrangement. Not enough to unseat Borges, but would give most any other short story writer a run for their money.
Upon viewing a thistle bush at the height of a storm, William Wordsworth claims to have thought to himself, “‘cannot I by some invention do as much to make this thorn permanently an impressive object as the storm has made it to my eyes at this moment.’” The resulting poem, to my mind one of his most fascinating and brilliant, was “The Thorn,” a “lyrical ballad” alternately meditating on the appearance of a thorn and its surrounding environs and speculating on the possibly sinister bereavement of a young mother. Whenever there is a gap in the narrator’s knowledge of this second plot, the titular thorn appears as if to understand and conclude in metaphor the vague, unnameable violence that cannot be understood or concluded in life.
This is the first half of Cortazar’s collection — horror in search of a metaphor to give it body. To parse the unreachable fears, to make them real and present and near through image and wordplay. Through something in our control.
The second half, beginning around “All Fires the Fire,” sees the violence spilling over, the symbols overcome by blood, by embodied, human terrors. If there is a horror that moves beyond us, so too is there a horror that moves with us, in us. This progression, this unveiling, far from feeling disappointing, instead sobers the mind, keeps it from relegating terror to the realm of the abstract. There are real and present dangers all around us, as Cortazar well knew, as Bolaño and Bonomini echo.
A brilliant exploration. The Argentines have me by the throat. Hoping to cover some other blind spots in the coming year by reading more Black and Middle Eastern authors, but may have to linger in South America just a while longer.
Favorites: “Letter to a Young Lady in Paris,” “Blow-up,” “The Secret Weapons,” “Don’t You Blame Anyone,” and “Instructions for John Howell.”
Upon viewing a thistle bush at the height of a storm, William Wordsworth claims to have thought to himself, “‘cannot I by some invention do as much to make this thorn permanently an impressive object as the storm has made it to my eyes at this moment.’” The resulting poem, to my mind one of his most fascinating and brilliant, was “The Thorn,” a “lyrical ballad” alternately meditating on the appearance of a thorn and its surrounding environs and speculating on the possibly sinister bereavement of a young mother. Whenever there is a gap in the narrator’s knowledge of this second plot, the titular thorn appears as if to understand and conclude in metaphor the vague, unnameable violence that cannot be understood or concluded in life.
This is the first half of Cortazar’s collection — horror in search of a metaphor to give it body. To parse the unreachable fears, to make them real and present and near through image and wordplay. Through something in our control.
The second half, beginning around “All Fires the Fire,” sees the violence spilling over, the symbols overcome by blood, by embodied, human terrors. If there is a horror that moves beyond us, so too is there a horror that moves with us, in us. This progression, this unveiling, far from feeling disappointing, instead sobers the mind, keeps it from relegating terror to the realm of the abstract. There are real and present dangers all around us, as Cortazar well knew, as Bolaño and Bonomini echo.
A brilliant exploration. The Argentines have me by the throat. Hoping to cover some other blind spots in the coming year by reading more Black and Middle Eastern authors, but may have to linger in South America just a while longer.
Favorites: “Letter to a Young Lady in Paris,” “Blow-up,” “The Secret Weapons,” “Don’t You Blame Anyone,” and “Instructions for John Howell.”
Read
May 25, 2025Seen on Joe C’s bedside table.
Read in Vintage Ed English translation by Alberto Manguel, Paul Blackburn et al.
House Taken Over
Notes of Fred and Mandala at the Sneep.
The narrator and his sister Irene are left alone in the ancestral home in Buenos Aires big enough for a family of eight. They live comfortably off the estate. Their day is divided between cleaning all morning and knitting (Irene) and reading (our narrator) -tho ‘nothing worthwhile (in terms of literature) had arrived in Argentina since 1939’. The siblings have missed out on marriage and are into their forties: ‘We were fine, and little by little we stopped thinking. You can live without thinking’. They sleep badly and Irene talks in the night.
But one day mysterious voices take over part of the house, and finally all of it, driving the siblings out in the clothes they are wearing. No explanation is offered.
Who are the invaders? Their dead relatives? Ancestors? Friends of the past? Communists? Have Irene and brother gone mad/ schizophrenic?
Letter to a Young Lady in Paris
Kafka-esque surrealism. Cf. Die Verwandlung.
Our narrator writes a confessional letter to Andrea in Paris, in whose perfectly ordered flat in Buenos Aires he is lodging while she is away. Unclear what their relationship is-- seem to be friends. He confesses that he can't stop vomiting bunnies, and since he can't bring himself to kill them right away, he is keeping them in her flat.
What do the bunnies symbolise? A bad habit? A mental or physical illness? His mental disorder which gets exacerbated by her clean and orderly flat?
The end seems to hint at suicide--more bunnies are appearing daily and he has resolved to kill them, and perhaps himself too: 'I don't think it will be difficult to pick up eleven small raw bits splattered over the pavement, perhaps they won't even be noticed, people will be too occupied with the other body...'
Read in Vintage Ed English translation by Alberto Manguel, Paul Blackburn et al.
House Taken Over
Notes of Fred and Mandala at the Sneep.
The narrator and his sister Irene are left alone in the ancestral home in Buenos Aires big enough for a family of eight. They live comfortably off the estate. Their day is divided between cleaning all morning and knitting (Irene) and reading (our narrator) -tho ‘nothing worthwhile (in terms of literature) had arrived in Argentina since 1939’. The siblings have missed out on marriage and are into their forties: ‘We were fine, and little by little we stopped thinking. You can live without thinking’. They sleep badly and Irene talks in the night.
But one day mysterious voices take over part of the house, and finally all of it, driving the siblings out in the clothes they are wearing. No explanation is offered.
Who are the invaders? Their dead relatives? Ancestors? Friends of the past? Communists? Have Irene and brother gone mad/ schizophrenic?
Letter to a Young Lady in Paris
Kafka-esque surrealism. Cf. Die Verwandlung.
Our narrator writes a confessional letter to Andrea in Paris, in whose perfectly ordered flat in Buenos Aires he is lodging while she is away. Unclear what their relationship is-- seem to be friends. He confesses that he can't stop vomiting bunnies, and since he can't bring himself to kill them right away, he is keeping them in her flat.
What do the bunnies symbolise? A bad habit? A mental or physical illness? His mental disorder which gets exacerbated by her clean and orderly flat?
The end seems to hint at suicide--more bunnies are appearing daily and he has resolved to kill them, and perhaps himself too: 'I don't think it will be difficult to pick up eleven small raw bits splattered over the pavement, perhaps they won't even be noticed, people will be too occupied with the other body...'
June 24, 2022
A Compendium of Beasts.
Reading Cortazar always feels a bit brisk at first. You get the feeling it’s time to bundle up and hibernate for awhile, reminding yourself that spring is coming and with it all the explanations to this enigmatic magical realist bestiary blizzard that encompasses you.
I had heard that the only thing better than Cortazar’s great novel “Hopscotch” are his short stories. And while I beg to differ, there is no doubting the shared greatness of Cortazar’s oeuvre. If I’m honest, a few of these short stories didn’t hit home the way I thought they might, but I wonder how much of that had to do with my unfamiliarity with the Argentinian socio-political context of the 40s and 50s. What kept me going was Cortazar’s way of holding the reader through the characters who vomit rabbits, who live in dark candle-less rooms, who hide from serial killers in their shadowed garrets, who reincarnate simultaneously, and who become amphibious creatures glowering in an aquarium universe.
Between Buenos Aires and Paris, these stories stutter sacred blasphemies through violence and melancholy. Many of them act like medieval bestiary’s—anecdotal parables of beasts and creatures. Yet in Cortazar one gets the sense that being a beast has more to do with one’s political sense of self, how one situates oneself to power and that the modality of art is to reorient the imagination towards the powerless.
Favourite stories: The Night Face Up, Axolotl, The Secret Weapons, Blow-Up, A Yellow Flower, Tara, The Southern Thruway, and The School at Night.
Reading Cortazar always feels a bit brisk at first. You get the feeling it’s time to bundle up and hibernate for awhile, reminding yourself that spring is coming and with it all the explanations to this enigmatic magical realist bestiary blizzard that encompasses you.
I had heard that the only thing better than Cortazar’s great novel “Hopscotch” are his short stories. And while I beg to differ, there is no doubting the shared greatness of Cortazar’s oeuvre. If I’m honest, a few of these short stories didn’t hit home the way I thought they might, but I wonder how much of that had to do with my unfamiliarity with the Argentinian socio-political context of the 40s and 50s. What kept me going was Cortazar’s way of holding the reader through the characters who vomit rabbits, who live in dark candle-less rooms, who hide from serial killers in their shadowed garrets, who reincarnate simultaneously, and who become amphibious creatures glowering in an aquarium universe.
Between Buenos Aires and Paris, these stories stutter sacred blasphemies through violence and melancholy. Many of them act like medieval bestiary’s—anecdotal parables of beasts and creatures. Yet in Cortazar one gets the sense that being a beast has more to do with one’s political sense of self, how one situates oneself to power and that the modality of art is to reorient the imagination towards the powerless.
Favourite stories: The Night Face Up, Axolotl, The Secret Weapons, Blow-Up, A Yellow Flower, Tara, The Southern Thruway, and The School at Night.
October 13, 2024
Hubo nucho que no entendí, pero precisamente esa es la gracia, se ve que Cortázar fue alguien que se divertía escribiendo, por lo tanto lo importante aqui no es lo que te dice, sino el como lo hace, como una especie de juego donde debes leer y releer cada vez desentrañando mas y fijandote mas en cada detalle hasta que logres darle un significado... TU significado y todo este juego y misticismo no es algo que cualquiera pueda hacer bien, ojala algun dia poder adorar algo tanto como este hombre lo hacia hacia el escribir
January 27, 2024
I don't really know why I didn't like this book more.
Usually, I love the symbolic-magical, deeply fucked up concepts like the ones in these short stories. Many of them gave me the chills. Many of them got me thinking for months. I'm even bringing one, the Omnibus to the literature therapy session I hold next week.
But somehow I still didn't get absorbed. I even put it aside for over a year. Dunno.
Usually, I love the symbolic-magical, deeply fucked up concepts like the ones in these short stories. Many of them gave me the chills. Many of them got me thinking for months. I'm even bringing one, the Omnibus to the literature therapy session I hold next week.
But somehow I still didn't get absorbed. I even put it aside for over a year. Dunno.
April 5, 2024
4.5
I read a selection of stories for a group where the facilitator is an expert on the author. It will be interesting to discuss the style, symbolism and use of magic realism with someone from Argentina and get other’s perspectives.
We had an excellent and insightful meeting in which I learned a lot about this author as a writer and person plus more knowledge about Argentina. I’d like to read more by Cortazar now
I read a selection of stories for a group where the facilitator is an expert on the author. It will be interesting to discuss the style, symbolism and use of magic realism with someone from Argentina and get other’s perspectives.
We had an excellent and insightful meeting in which I learned a lot about this author as a writer and person plus more knowledge about Argentina. I’d like to read more by Cortazar now
March 13, 2022
This collection started off great, but I felt the quality of the stories tailed off towards the end. Cortazar is clearly a master of settling you into a scene before turning the whole thing on its head within a few pages, but perhaps with so many stories written it was inevitable that some would fall flat.
February 28, 2026
Feels like a weird one to rate... more of a #experience. Really challenging, sometimes infuriating, but always rewarding. Taught me a lot about fiction writing and point of view and surrealism and and and. Writing that reminds me how fascism is nothing new! Glad to have these words, the last story in this collection will stay with me for a long time, I'm relieved to (never) be finished with it.
July 22, 2020
A weird mix of Dušan Mitana and Stephen King written with flourish and creativity. Even though they were published 80-50 years ago, the stories feel absolutely contemporary. Cortazar is a master of foreshadowing and subtle humor; reading this was a delight.
December 2, 2020
Took me ages to read these short stories - they felt so dense and heavy I couldn't swallow more than one in the same sitting. Magic realism, with sudden flourishes of violence. Very easy to see the similarities to Bolano.
March 19, 2023
Did not finish. Really well written stories, no doubt. But I prefer short stories that leave me haunted, that I can’t stop thinking about or trying to solve. These did not provide that for me, but I am sure someone would absolutely love this. The writing is superb
June 28, 2025
These stories cut straight to the heart of humanity: connection, grief, love, etc. At times they stray into the absurd, in a way that is still believable and understandable. I never thought I could read a story about a man who regurgitates live rabbits and understand completely what is going on.
February 14, 2022
I loved the hard cuts from actual scene to Isabell's retelling while laying in bed- it was a cool way to get across the plot.
Did Not Finish
March 10, 2024Too boring and repetitive for me. I did like the bunny story though.
January 20, 2025
Absolutely brilliant!!!
February 2, 2025
I loved some of these, but really struggled to get through the rest. At times, the writing was too obscure and experimental at the expense of a satisfying narrative payoff.
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