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Los libros y la calle
Al recorrer las calles del mundo, un lector comprueba una verdad: la sexualidad, la ideología, la amistad, las guerras, el amor, todo encuentra su eco en la literatura. Tanto que un día, en la cama de un hospital, en París, decide dar comienzo a un destino postergado: el del escritor Edgardo Cozarinsky. Se trata de un sobreviviente, un aventurero, un flâneur de librerías que prefiere la soledad al ruido, la "intemporalidad" a las modas, y ser un extranjero que alcanza en la lectura un pasaporte a la libertad.
172 pages, Paperback
First published February 1, 2019
37 people want to read
About the author
Edgardo Cozarinsky
49 books40 followersHis family name goes back to his great grandparents, Jewish immigrants from Kiev and Odessa at the end of the 19th century, his first name tells of his mother's infatuation with Edgar Allan Poe.
After an adolescence mostly spent in neighbourhood cinemas showing double bills of old Hollywood films and reading an inordinate amount of fiction in Spanish, English and French (favourite authors - Stevenson, Conrad, some Henry James), he studied literature at Buenos Aires university, wrote for local and Spanish cinephile magazines and published an early essay on James which developed out of graduation work - El laberinto de la apariencia (The Labyrinth of Appearance, 1964), a book he later suppressed. He was barely twenty when he became acquainted with Borges, Bioy Casares and Silvina Ocampo, all writers of prestige whom he saw frequently during his years in Buenos Aires. In 1973 he won a literary prize with an essay on gossip as narrative device in James and Proust. In 1974 he published Borges y el cine, a book enlarged in every reprint (Spain, 1978 and 2002, and translations) which he also does not want reprinted now.
After a first nine-month stay in Europe and a visit to New York between September 1966 and June 1967, he returned to Buenos Aires with the desire and the decision to leave behind his life as a literary idler. After dabbling in journalism, in the culture section of the weeklies Primera Plana and Panorama, he made a first film, an underground feature shot on weekends throughout a year, knowing that it could not pass the local censorship of the period. It was nevertheless screened at festivals throughout Europe and the United States. Its title was already a challenge - ... (Puntos suspensivos - Dot Dot Dot).
In 1974, in the turmoil of political agitation and imminent repression, he left Buenos Aires for Paris. There he embarked into filmmaking that falls roughly into two categories - fiction films and "essays", mixing documentary material with a personal, even private reflexion on the issues raised by the material. The most distinguished of these is La Guerre d'un seul homme (One Man's War, 1981), a confrontation between Ernst Jünger wartime diaries and the French newsreels of the occupation period. At a time when the arts' departments of several European television networks were willing to support such ventures, Cozarinsky was able to develop this approach in a series of very original works.
During the rest of the seventies and the eighties his literary career was mostly dormant. But his only published work of the period became an instant cult book - Vudú urbano (Urban voodoo, 1985), a mixture of fiction and essay not unlike his film work, with prologues by Susan Sontag and the Cuyban writer Guillermo Cabrera Infante.
In the same year, after the end of the military regime in Argentina, he visited briefly to Buenos Aires. Three years later, he made a film in Argentina, in the far South, a "Southern" - Guerreros y cautivas (Warriors and Captive Women). From that date on he started visiting his native country more and more often, occasionally shooting there material for his European "essays". His most adventurous later films were Rothschild's Violin and Ghosts of Tangier, both made between 1995 and 1996.
In 1999, he spent a month in a Paris hospital for a backbone infection, a period during which a cancer was diagnosed. In his own words, he felt the ringing of a bell telling to stop wasting his time - "I always wanted to be a writer, and had not dared publish, even finish what I started..." It was in hospital that he wrote the first two stories in his prize-winning book La novia de Odessa (The Bride from Odessa). From that date on, his film work became sparse and he started publishing "all the books I had not put on paper", fiction mostly but also essays and chronicles. He became immediately established as a writer to reckon with in the Spanish language, and was translated into English, French, German and several o
After an adolescence mostly spent in neighbourhood cinemas showing double bills of old Hollywood films and reading an inordinate amount of fiction in Spanish, English and French (favourite authors - Stevenson, Conrad, some Henry James), he studied literature at Buenos Aires university, wrote for local and Spanish cinephile magazines and published an early essay on James which developed out of graduation work - El laberinto de la apariencia (The Labyrinth of Appearance, 1964), a book he later suppressed. He was barely twenty when he became acquainted with Borges, Bioy Casares and Silvina Ocampo, all writers of prestige whom he saw frequently during his years in Buenos Aires. In 1973 he won a literary prize with an essay on gossip as narrative device in James and Proust. In 1974 he published Borges y el cine, a book enlarged in every reprint (Spain, 1978 and 2002, and translations) which he also does not want reprinted now.
After a first nine-month stay in Europe and a visit to New York between September 1966 and June 1967, he returned to Buenos Aires with the desire and the decision to leave behind his life as a literary idler. After dabbling in journalism, in the culture section of the weeklies Primera Plana and Panorama, he made a first film, an underground feature shot on weekends throughout a year, knowing that it could not pass the local censorship of the period. It was nevertheless screened at festivals throughout Europe and the United States. Its title was already a challenge - ... (Puntos suspensivos - Dot Dot Dot).
In 1974, in the turmoil of political agitation and imminent repression, he left Buenos Aires for Paris. There he embarked into filmmaking that falls roughly into two categories - fiction films and "essays", mixing documentary material with a personal, even private reflexion on the issues raised by the material. The most distinguished of these is La Guerre d'un seul homme (One Man's War, 1981), a confrontation between Ernst Jünger wartime diaries and the French newsreels of the occupation period. At a time when the arts' departments of several European television networks were willing to support such ventures, Cozarinsky was able to develop this approach in a series of very original works.
During the rest of the seventies and the eighties his literary career was mostly dormant. But his only published work of the period became an instant cult book - Vudú urbano (Urban voodoo, 1985), a mixture of fiction and essay not unlike his film work, with prologues by Susan Sontag and the Cuyban writer Guillermo Cabrera Infante.
In the same year, after the end of the military regime in Argentina, he visited briefly to Buenos Aires. Three years later, he made a film in Argentina, in the far South, a "Southern" - Guerreros y cautivas (Warriors and Captive Women). From that date on he started visiting his native country more and more often, occasionally shooting there material for his European "essays". His most adventurous later films were Rothschild's Violin and Ghosts of Tangier, both made between 1995 and 1996.
In 1999, he spent a month in a Paris hospital for a backbone infection, a period during which a cancer was diagnosed. In his own words, he felt the ringing of a bell telling to stop wasting his time - "I always wanted to be a writer, and had not dared publish, even finish what I started..." It was in hospital that he wrote the first two stories in his prize-winning book La novia de Odessa (The Bride from Odessa). From that date on, his film work became sparse and he started publishing "all the books I had not put on paper", fiction mostly but also essays and chronicles. He became immediately established as a writer to reckon with in the Spanish language, and was translated into English, French, German and several o
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
February 14, 2019
Luminosas viñetas de lector cineasta. Como sus películas, este libro recorre penumbras que pueden ser amaneceres o crepúsculos, es casi lo mismo como segmento de luz tenue. Lo interesante es el dispositivo lector, la subjetividad que se reconfigura en los libros. Explora los bordes. Dice David Oubiña que no los cruza, pero me parece que sí. Persisten los temas obsesivos de toda su obra. No abandona nunca esa mezcla que es una seña de identidad en Cozarinsky, una amistosa antipatía, un gesto punk entre espontáneo y calculado. Veo en este libro que ese gesto no es importante, que Cozarinsky testimonia crisis y elaboraciones. Son muy interesantes las anécdotas de personas, lugares, implosiones estéticas, todo atravesado por los libros y la calle.
July 18, 2020
Muy decepcionante. Una lástima
August 8, 2024
No es un libro para mi o yo no soy la lectora del libro.
Me gustó la intención. Se nota que el autor sabe un montón de literatura. Pero no logré conectarme. Me pareció un libro inundado de referencias inaccesibles. Es decir, tendría que haberme leído todo lo que ha leído él.
Lo intenté hasta el final pero no lo logré.
Me gustó la intención. Se nota que el autor sabe un montón de literatura. Pero no logré conectarme. Me pareció un libro inundado de referencias inaccesibles. Es decir, tendría que haberme leído todo lo que ha leído él.
Lo intenté hasta el final pero no lo logré.
October 29, 2020
No me gustó en absoluto.
January 2, 2026
Es el quinto libro de la Colección Lector&es de Editorial Ampersand que leo, y sigo encontrando muy estimulante esta idea: que escritores escriban sobre libros, en la modalidad que quieran, sin la obligación de la reseña clásica ni del ensayo académico. Este libro no es de mis favoritos de la colección, pero tiene pasajes muy buenos.
Me gustó sobre todo la última parte denominada "La calle" que incluye la reflexión que articula a partir de una cita de Oscar Wilde sobre la idea de que la vida imita al arte. Esa perversión de la experiencia —una vida contaminada por la literatura— como forma de estar en el mundo. Cozarinsky sugiere, que es una experiencia que quizá las generaciones futuras no conocerán del mismo modo. Que es la literatura —y no el psicoanálisis, ni la sociología, ni ninguna de las múltiples ramas de la fronda teórica— la que explica la vida, al menos para ciertos lectores.
También se aprende, o se recuerda, algo muy borgiano —vía Adolfo Bioy Casares—: no hay personas imposibles. Puede haber suicidas por felicidad, asesinos por benevolencia, personas que se aman hasta el punto de separarse para siempre. A lo sumo, hay personas poco frecuentes, no personas imposibles.
Me llevé además varias recomendaciones literarias.
Me gustó sobre todo la última parte denominada "La calle" que incluye la reflexión que articula a partir de una cita de Oscar Wilde sobre la idea de que la vida imita al arte. Esa perversión de la experiencia —una vida contaminada por la literatura— como forma de estar en el mundo. Cozarinsky sugiere, que es una experiencia que quizá las generaciones futuras no conocerán del mismo modo. Que es la literatura —y no el psicoanálisis, ni la sociología, ni ninguna de las múltiples ramas de la fronda teórica— la que explica la vida, al menos para ciertos lectores.
También se aprende, o se recuerda, algo muy borgiano —vía Adolfo Bioy Casares—: no hay personas imposibles. Puede haber suicidas por felicidad, asesinos por benevolencia, personas que se aman hasta el punto de separarse para siempre. A lo sumo, hay personas poco frecuentes, no personas imposibles.
Me llevé además varias recomendaciones literarias.
March 21, 2023
Es un libro lleno referencias, es un escritor que conoce mucho de literatura, pero lamentablemente es como una cita continua de sí mismo. Me cansó un poco y para ser un libro corto, tardé demasiado en leerlo.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews