Long out of print and now reissued in paperback, Cronopios and Famas is one of the best-loved books by Julio Cortzar, perhaps the greatest of Latin American novelists (author of Hopscotch and The Blow-Up and Other Stories). "The Instruction Manual," the first chapter, is an absurd assortment of tasks and items dissected in an instruction-manual format. "Unusual Occupations," the second chapter, describes the obsessions and predilections of the narrator's family, including the lodging of a tiger-just one tiger- "for the sole purpose of seeing the mechanism at work in all its complexity." Finally, the "Cronopios and Famas" section delightfully characterizes, in the words of Carlos Fuentes, "those enemies of pomposity, academic rigor mortis and cardboard celebrity-a band of literary Marx Brothers." As the Saturday Review remarked: "Each page of Cronopios and Famas sparkles with vivid satire that goes to the heart of human character and, in the best pieces, to the essence of the human condition."
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Anyone who doesn't read Cortazar is doomed. Not to read him is a serious invisible disease which in time can have terrible consequences. Something similar to a man who has never tasted peaches. He would quietly become sadder . . . and, probably, little by little, he would lose his hair. -- Pablo Neruda
About the Author
Julio Cortazar (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.
Inside This Book
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First Sentence
The job of having to soften up the brick every day, the job of cleaving a passage through the glutinous mass that declares itself to be the world, to collide every morning with the same narrow rectangular space with the disgusting name, filled with doggy satisfaction that everything is probably in its place, the same woman beside you, the same shoes, the same taste of the same toothpaste, the same sad houses across the street, the filthy slats on the shutters with the inscription the HOTEL BELGIUM. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
The job of having to soften up the brick every day, the job of cleaving a passage through the glutinous mass that declares itself to be the world, to collide every morning with the same narrow rectangular space with the disgusting name, filled with doggy satisfaction that everything is probably in its place, the same woman beside you, the same shoes, the same taste of the same toothpaste, the same sad houses across the street, the filthy slats on the shutters with the inscription the HOTEL BELGIUM. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
Most helpful customer reviews
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
Years ago I heard readings from this book on KPFK, and was quite impressed ( enough so to keep the tape for some 40 years) What a treat to find that it is available in paperback. Cortazar's sense of humour and sense of the absurd along with his poetic style are unsurpassed. If you have never read this one, it is a real treat. If I had to pick ten books to take to the proverbial desert island, this would be one of them!
By Spy Guy
Format:Paperback
This book will open your mind like it or not. The great writing style serves to seduce you as it works on you. This is the only book I would say demandeds to be read two or more times at the least. Once don't with it you can't help but feel like you know something that the people around you don't as if some how you had an edge.
Format:Paperback
This is on my list of favorite books of all time; it is a great book not because it subtly describes the frivolties of life and not because it shows the persistence of human spirit, blah blah blah... It is a beautiful and great book because it makes you laugh - in its own great non funny way. It is not laughing out loud, of course, more like chuckling to yourself as you read it. You even get to identify with the characters of the book, with their weird perks and idiosyncracies. In our real world, the cronopios have a great cult following (at least online) - in the book, they are what people strive to be: worry-free animals in pursuit of happiness.
I read this book on a regular basis, mostly in short pieces. It is written in short chapters, so even when you are too tired to read anything else, this will cheer you up.
Recommended for all conoisseurs of inventive and experimental literature.
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4.7 out of 5 stars
Most recent customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Brilliant and boldly experimental
"Cronopios and Famas," by Julio Cortazar, is one of those wonderful books that stands in a class by itself. Read more
Published on Jan 18 2001 by Michael J. Mazza
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great book, pity about the translation
All the reviewers have said that this book is wonderful and they're better than me at saying it. Suffice it to say that I agree with them and that any money that's not spent in... Read more
Published on Aug 17 2000 by Vince Cabrera
5.0 out of 5 stars
instructions on how to be joyful
A fama coming upon this book does a mad dance around it until quite unsensible, but still doesn't understand it; a cronopio gently nudges its binding with his nose, thinking... Read more
Published on Jun 16 2000 by B. Mernit
5.0 out of 5 stars
Unstable Stuff
Cronopios and Famas is a humorous and discourteous charge against the establishment. The lengthy title of one of its chapters gives us a summary of the entire books intentions:... Read more
Published on Sep 5 1999
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