The Writing's of Julio Cortazar

After reading the three works that we did by Julio Cortazar, I found his style of writing and his use of magical realism to be fascinating.  To me, his works were extremely original, and interesting beyond belief.  It has been a long time since I personally have done a lot of reading because I have not been in school for about two years and I am very glad that I am getting my school career back on track by beginning with these readings.  I am not usually someone who is very interested in what he reads for class, however, I found these readings, although short, to be quite captivating.

To begin with, "The continuity of Parks" was a read that left me wanting more as soon as I had finished it. It is amazing to me that with a little more than 500 words, Cortazar can sway the emotions of the reader as much as he does.  His changing on tenses seems to be one of the main reasons that I felt as though I had been through a time machine at the end of the read.  In my opinion this was an excellent Cortazar story for us to begin with.  Cortazar is never direct with what he is making you feel, but you (the reader) feel it nonetheless.  Cortazar shows how capable he is of changing emotions quickly when at the end of this story the reader has become the one in the chair who has been plotted against and is now dead.  I do not know that I have ever read anything quite like this, but I found the first work of Julio Cortazar's that I have read intriguing.

In the second story we read, "Our Demeanor at Wakes" Julio Cortazar confuses me just as much as he did in the first story we read of his.  After reading this story one time, I was left in utter confusion as to what had happened and had to then re-read the story.  After the second time I had a much more clear version of what had just happened.  I found this story to be quite perplexing at first, but after breaking it down both in class and at home by myself, I think I understand it a little bit more.  This story struck home with me just because I have been to a fair amount of wakes in my life, and several in the recent past.  I find it interesting when authors write about social situations and how people can react differently and why when in them.  This is a particularly "touchy" topic to write about, as most people do not have a huge interest in death, and discussing it regularly.  I think that is why I found Cortazar talking about how people act when they are mourning the death of someone to be as interesting as it was.  He examines how people behave, why they may do so, and in what capacity.  The family that he writes about has a lot of pride in their ability to mourn and they want to show that to everyone that they encounter in this story.  This seems like a very odd practice to me, but I suppose in some cultures this may be something that is to be proud of.  I just found the way in which Cortazar depicts these people was quite entertaining.  Essentially these people are insane and take over someone else's wake.  If you were to write a story like that on your own, I don't know if you could write one better than what we read from Cortazar.  He seems to nail it on the head.

I found "Axolotl" to have a very different mood than the other stories.  The first two stories that we read seemed to have a much more serious tone than this story about salamanders did.  First of all the major difference which is quite obvious is that the topic is very different than the other two.  However, all three of these stories do have a abundant usage of magical realism.  In Axolotl the person who loves watching the salamanders in the end becomes one who wishes that someone would write a story telling everyone else about Axolotl.  Funny that he wishes that, because that is actually what happened when Cortazar wrote this.  I found this story to be a lot easier to comprehend than the first two.  I only had to read this one once through whereas the first two stories both needed to be re-read to be fully comprehended.  I think that this story seems to be much more playful and more fun than his other two.  Again, Cortazar makes significant use of his changing of tenses and possessives in this story to relay his magical realism.  He switches back and forth from salamander to observer of salamander tank several times.

After reading and reflecting about all of these stories, I would say that I have learned a lot about magical realism through the readings of Julio Cortazar.  I found his short stories to be not only very interesting, but also sort of eye opening for me in particular.  I haven't had much experience at all with magical realism, but hopefully these readings will make me did even deeper into this world of magical realism.