The Night Face Up

by Julio Cortázar

Genres: Short Stories, School, Fiction, Classics

Unknown Binding

About the author

Julio 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.

Reviews

[Glenn Russell]

Doin’ the Julio flip of reality and dream.

Espectacular imaginación on display in Julio Cortázar's 1967 tale of a dude hospitalized following an accident on his motorcycle.

Shining and sparkling with the brilliance of Aztec gold, The Night Face Up dazzles us from beginning to end. Here are a number of memorable themes and events:

Doin' the Julio Flip in his own life: Julio Cortázar recounts when he was a boy growing up there was an older adult on the inside but when he himself became a man, the dynamics of his life flipped: he was an adult with a little boy inside. This flipping from boy/man to man/boy undoubtedly contributed to Julio's penchant to shift back and forth between levels of reality in his fiction as if a little kid playing make-believe under his bedroom blankets.

Speed, Speed, Speed: "We affirm that the world’s magnificence has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed." So proclaimed Italian artist F. T. Marinetti in his 1909 Manifesto of Futurism. Bull's eye, Julio! Using a motorcycle as the symbol of speed in our modern world was a flash of literary genius.



Modern and Urban: With all the speed and so many people, cities need rules and regulations to keep everyone safe, such things as traffic lights. However, as we all know, accidents do happen and a fun, sunny day can instantly turn into cuts, scrapes, broken bones and a trip to the hospital. And this is exactly what happens to Julio's unnamed protagonist when a woman crosses the street against the red and he swerves to avoid hitting her.

Post-Op: Let's give our young man a name, an energetic guy who could be any one of millions of young men around the globe - let's call him Juan. Following surgery, Juan wakes up with stitches over his eye, his arm in a plaster cast and feeling thirsty, feverish and woozy.

Crossover: Juan slips into a fever dream where he's a Moteca Indian running for his life in a sweltering jungle, running from Aztec warriors. Poor, Juan! He wakes from the nightmare in his hospital bed but slips back into sleep. As a Moteca, he holds a sacred amulet to his chest and prays he will not be captured. Again he awakes in the hospital and this time fights to keep awake but, alas, sleep overwhelms him and he's back in the jungle. Bad news - the Aztecs surround him. Although he's able to kill one of the Aztecs with his knife, the warriors tie him up and take him away. Juan knows all too well what fate awaits him.



Storytelling Magic: Please keep in mind this is a tale written by the one and only Julio Cortázar. Many are the themes and questions posed, including the contrast between the open veins of Latin America and oh, so civilized North America and Europe, between dream and reality, between the blood sacrifice on the alter of an Aztec temple and the blood sacrifice on an operating table in a modern hospital.



What?!! Are you serious, Mr. Reviewer? I most certainly am serious: as the Aztecs had their blood sacrifices, so we in our modern world have ours. If anybody has any doubts, ask the families of those thousands of unfortunates who have died under the surgeon's knife following a serious vehicular accident.



Argentine author Julio Cortázar, 1914-1984

"It was unusual as a dream because it was full of smells, and he never dreamt smells. First a marshy smell, there to the left of the trail the swamps began already, the quaking bogs from which no one ever returned. But the reek lifted, and instead there came a dark, fresh composite fragrance, like the night under which he moved, in flight from the Aztecs. And it was all so natural, he had to run from the Aztecs who had set out on their manhunt, and his sole chance was to find a place to hide in the deepest part of the forest. taking care not to lose the narrow trail which only they, the Motecas, knew." - Julio Cortázar, The Night Face Up

[Nur · Rating 1 out of 5]

Peh
Dream within a dream gibi Aztec-Modern world vs.
Pek sarmadı, sonra tekrar okunabilir

[Pedro Bastos Oliveira · Rating 4 out of 5]

“First there was a confusion, as if all his sensations for that moment, blunted or muddled-were being drawn into himself. He realized that he was running in pitch-darkness, although above, the sky crisscrossed with treetops was less black than the rest. The trail, he thought. I've got off the trail. His feet sank into a bed of leaves and mud, and then he couldn't take a step that the branches of shrubs did not whiplash his ribs and legs. Out of breath, knowing despite the darkness and silence that he was surrounded, he crouched down to listen. Maybe the trail was very near-with the first daylight he would be able to see it again but for the moment nothing could help him find it. The hand that had unconsciously gripped the haft of the stone knife climbed like a fen scorpion up to his neck where the protecting amulet hung. Barely moving his lips, he mumbled the supplication of the corn, which brings about the beneficent moons, and the prayer to Her Very Highness, to the distributor of all Motecan possessions. At the same time, he felt his ankles sinking deeper into the mud, and the waiting in the darkness of the obscure grove of live oak grew intolerable. The war of the blossom had started at the beginning of the moon and had been going on for three days and three nights now. If he managed to hide in the depths of the forest, getting off the trail farther up past the marsh country, perhaps the warriors wouldn't follow his track. He thought of the many prisoners they'd already taken. But the number didn't count, only the consecrated period. The hunt would continue until the priests gave the sign to return. Everything had its number and its limit, and was still within the sacred period, and he on the other side from the hunters.
He heard the cries and leaped up, knife in hand. As if the sky were aflame on the horizon, he saw torches moving among the branches, very near him. The smell of war was unbearable, and when the first enemy jumped him, leaped at his throat, he felt an almost pleasure in sinking the stone blade flat to the haft into his chest. The lights were already around him, the happy cries. He managed to cut the air once or twice, then a rope snared him from behind.

“It’s the fever," the man in the next 11 bed said. "The same thing happened to
me when they operated on my duodenum. Take some water— you'll see, you'll
sleep all right."

[Sarah Morgan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked this book. I had to read it for my english class, so I didn't choose to pick it up. However, I am glad we read it. It was interesting, and the twist ending shocked me. I loved the parallels between the modern world and the world when the Aztecs' were alive. The stone knife and the doctors scappal, one representing death, pain, fear, and more. The other representing healing, safety, and more.

[Hester · Rating 4 out of 5]

Luscious story , full of the five senses , playing with reality and the dream state . Brilliant twist too .

The genius is the lack of sense of specific time or place and the two storylines play hopscotch with each other . The writer is messing with narrative reality and the fantastic and having a lot of mischievous fun .

[Vanessa Yeazel · Rating 3 out of 5]

This has a cool concept, and somewhat unique idea. It wasn't anything special, but it was still an interesting, fascinating read.

[Bella · Rating 2 out of 5]

2/5 ⭐️

[Emmalee T · Rating 2 out of 5]

still confused but inspired me to group read a murder mystery

[Quinn · Rating 2 out of 5]

what the fuck was that ending 😭

[pilar zapien · Rating 4 out of 5]

For SPHS6

[Catarina · Rating 3 out of 5]

(more of a 3.5!)

[Marii · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this for English but it was surprisingly interesting

[Luchi The Bookworm · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read it for school, a quite interesting story. Not my usual cup of tea but interesting. Kinda difficult to understand 😕