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"Diary of Andrés Fava" from Anderson Tepper in The New York Times Book Review

 

Diary of Andrés Fava

2005-06-05

This previously unpublished portion of an early work by Cortázar is actually a fragment of a fragment. Ostensibly the daily jottings of Andrés Fava, a peripheral character in the novel Final Exam, the text offers a whirlwind voyage through Cortázar’s mind. Written in 1950 and set in an eerie, fog-bound Buenos Aires, it anticipates the mental games and mortal quests of the great Argentine writer’s masterpiece, Hopscotch, and more experimental works like Cronopios and Famas and Around the Day in Eighty Worlds. Overflowing with existential riffs and noirish turns, the narrative also features notes on jazz and appearances by phantasmagoric creatures of the imagination. “This notebook is a cage full of monsters,” Cortázar writes, “and outside is Buenos Aires.”

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