An Author Born in Exile: Julio Cortázar between Rayuela and Libro de Manuel

Abstract

Among the writers of the Latin American Boom, Julio Cortázar is generally thought as one who breaks with tradition, imagines a new reader, and creates a new concept of author and the writing process. Against this view, my essay looks into what’s become the commonplace of Cortázar’s figure by reconstructing his career as a writer. Using cultural studies as my framework, I show how he became a writer while in exile, especially thanks to Hopscotch and its major influence on other writers. Since the Argentinian literature of the 1970s requires both an autonomous and a heteronomous perspective, Cortázar's work emerges at a paradigm shift: from an avant-garde time when he still trusts in the possibility of action through words to a time when he turns skeptically to postmodernity. His creation lives at the threshold of confidence and painful skepticism. Cortázar's work is the result of a vast melancholic encyclopedia that emerges at a paradigm shift, a shift that is still ongoing.