Queer Places:
Plazoleta Julio Cortázar, Serrano, C1414 CABA, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Montparnasse Cemetery, Paris
Julio Florencio Cortázar[1] (26 August 1914 – 12 February 1984) was an Argentine novelist, short story writer, essayist, and translator. Although he decried corruption of a minor , in either homosexual or heterosexual seduction , he welcomed a more tolerant attitude toward homosexuality. At Your Service is one of Cortázar's many sympathetic portrayals of an individual on the margin of society, in this case a homosexual, which at the same time explores the theme of false reality.
Known as one of the founders of the Latin American Boom, Cortázar influenced an entire generation of Spanish-speaking readers and writers in America and Europe. He is considered one of the most innovative and original authors of his time, a master of history, poetic prose and short story in general and a creator of important novels that inaugurated a new way of making literature in the Hispanic world by breaking the classical moulds through narratives that escaped temporal linearity. He lived his childhood and adolescence and incipient maturity in Argentina and, after the 1950s, in Europe. He lived in Italy, Spain, Switzerland and France, where he settled in 1951 and composed some of his works.[2]
Cortázar had three long-term romantic relationships with women. The first was with Aurora Bernárdez, an Argentine translator, whom he married in 1953. They separated in 1968[14] when he became involved with the Lithuanian writer, editor, translator, and filmmaker Ugnė Karvelis, whom he never formally married, and who reportedly stimulated Cortázar's interest in politics,[15] although his political sensibilities had already been awakened by a visit to Cuba in 1963, the first of multiple trips that he would make to that country throughout the remainder of his life. He later married Canadian writer Carol Dunlop. After Dunlop's death in 1982, Aurora Bernárdez accompanied Cortázar during his final illness and, in accordance with his longstanding wishes, inherited the rights to all his works.[16][17] He died in Paris in 1984, and is interred in the cimetière du Montparnasse. The cause of his death was reported to be leukemia, though some sources state that he died from AIDS as a result of receiving a blood transfusion.[18][19]
Michelangelo Antonioni's film Blowup (1966) was inspired by Cortázar's story "Las babas del diablo", which in turn was based on a photograph taken by Chilean photographer Sergio Larraín during a shoot outside of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris.[26] Cortázar's story "La autopista del sur" ("The Southern Thruway") influenced another film of the 1960s, Jean-Luc Godard's Week End (1967).[27] The filmmaker Manuel Antín has directed three films based on Cortázar stories, Cartas de mamá, Circe and Intimidad de los parques.[28] Chilean novelist Roberto Bolaño cited Cortázar as a key influence on his novel The Savage Detectives: "To say that I'm permanently indebted to the work of Borges and Cortázar is obvious."[29] Puerto Rican novelist Giannina Braschi used Cortázar's story "Las babas del diablo" as a springboard for the chapter called "Blow-up" in her bilingual novel Yo-Yo Boing! (1998), which features scenes with Cortázar's characters La Maga and Rocamadour.[30] Cortázar is mentioned and spoken highly of in Rabih Alameddine's 1998 novel, Koolaids: The Art of War. North American novelist Deena Metzger cites Cortázar as co-author of her novel Doors: A Fiction for Jazz Horn,[31] written twenty years after his death. In Buenos Aires, a school, a public library, and a square in the Palermo neighborhood carry Cortázar's name.
My published books:
