This article is adapted from AQ’s special report on China and Latin America
“What good is a writer if he can’t destroy literature?” wrote Julio Cortázar in his seminal work, Hopscotch, in 1963. Sixteen years later, he came out with a new novel that showed, above anything else, that very desire to do away with the rules of literature.
Fragmented, absurd, with troves of playful language, and following an eccentric character’s ramblings, A Certain Lucas is everything one expects of Cortázar and, therefore, nothing one expects of a novel. His whimsical work, translated by Gregory Rabassa and long out of print, has been resurfaced by New Directions Publishing in an edition released in October.
Loosely connected to the main character, Lucas, the series of interlocking fragments covers a constellation of playful writing characteristic of Cortázar. Lucas, then, is just an excuse for his creator to delve into his own obsessions: questions about identity; musings on why “we” write; criticisms of the incessant need for hyperproduction—the seemingly natural instinct to make of everything something “useful”; what he calls “amateur” citizens whose privilege clouds their understanding of lives beyond their own; inequality; government inefficiency; authoritarianism; and lack of autonomy. All of this is told through inventive, absurd stories: little fish being injected into our bloodstreams, driving beside a dead copilot, spelling errors turned into lively rats, and swimming in pools of grits.
It’s perhaps this mix of playfulness with depth that makes the new edition so necessary. Cortázar’s text is inherently political, yet not obviously so. It comes as a welcome reminder—a warning, even—that what burdens us today also did decades ago.
A Certain Lucas
Julio Cortázar
Translated by Gregory Rabassa
New Directions
144 pages
Take the story “It Could Happen to Us, Believe Me.” In it, Cortázar makes a taunting critique of the blurred lines between literature, media, propaganda, and an audience’s vulnerability to censorship. A “big shot” buys an invention that flattens out printed letters: The device pulls on each letter and leaves it smooth on the page, a horizontal string of ink. Intended to censor his opponents by flattening out their words, he ironically ends up eliminating all the texts in the world, including his own propaganda. But how could the words of the story be written, then? Because they were written by the creator of the invention and “there’s no rule that doesn’t have its exception.” All systems have their contradictions, and manipulating them can create a double-edged sword: agency that leads to freedom or a way in for those looking to exercise even further control.
The absurd and fantastical work that Cortázar creates serves to subvert the flatness we’ve grown accustomed to. For modern readers, Cortázar is an act of resistance against simplified narratives and attention spans taken over by tech addictions. Cortázar requires patient, attentive readers, ready to be challenged by this so-called “destruction of literature.” New Directions, an independent publishing house focused on literature in translation, discovered and republished a book that is better enjoyed through a second (even third) read, reminding us of the necessity of patience in reading.
All of that said, that this book was originally published a decade into Cortázar’s career says a lot about its form and function. It’s arguably his most self-indulgent work. Although most of the fragments were amusing, sometimes it felt like Cortázar was playing with the reader to show off, rather than to engage. This made the novel often hard to get through and, whereas Bestiary is imaginative and Hopscotch genuinely reflective, A Certain Lucas often just felt absurd for the sake of being so.
In all, readers will find in this book Cortázar in all his splendor: absurdity, magical realism, playfulness, an eccentric character, and mazes that turn you around and surprise even the most attentive of readers. It’s up to each one of you to decide whether you have the palate for so much destruction.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Miranda Mazariegos
Reading Time: 3 minutesMazariegos is an editor at AQ.
A Medieval Dancing Mania Sweeps Mexico in a New Novel
Daniel Saldaña París reconstructs a centuries-old tale for this age of wildfires and pandemics.
