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Part I is a story about the emptiness of bohemian intellectuals. Oliveira feels like a dark portrait of what I could have become had I never gotten over teen angst and intellectual self-importance. He's a man-child of a breed that is sadly all too common among academics, which makes it difficult to sympathize with him, and a pleasure to see him brought low by his own awfulness. Good on La Maga for ditching him!
— Oct 15, 2022 04:30AM
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Mandel
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Having finished part II - which concludes the main narrative of the novel - I can't help but think Cortazar was influence by Beckett's Murphy, perhaps is an homage to Murphy. Both novels are about men crippled by their inability to engage with the world and other people. Both men estrange the women who are devoted to them, and end up working in an insane asylum, whose they find much in common with.
— Oct 29, 2022 02:21AM
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Oct 15, 2022 08:34AM
Nice take on the reading. I found their existence chaotic and devastating, yet the parallels to the European setting of Bolaño’s Savage Detectives recalls the role, plight and quest of “the poet”.
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Interesting. Your mentioning Bolaño makes me think of a comparison to "The Part About the Critics", whose characters aren't exactly Bohemians, but are similarly clueless sophisticates. If the portrayal is devastating to me, it's because I have often also sought meaning in books, and Cortazar does a good job showing how this can lead us a astray - droning on eruditely while ignoring the dead baby in the room.
