No products in the cart.

No products in the cart.

Autonauts of the Cosmoroute

by

Translated from by

Published: December 2007

Paperback ISBN: 9780979333002

SKU: N/A Category: Tags: ,
$20.00

1 in stock (can be backordered)

With photographs by Julio Cortรกzar and Carol Dunlop and illustrations by Stรฉphane Hรฉbert.

Autonauts of the Cosmoroute is aย love story, a travelogue, a collection of stories and snapshots, both visual and verbal, irreverent and brilliant.ย In May of โ€˜82, Julio Cortรกzar, literary explorer of the highest order, set out with Carol Dunlop aboard their VW camper van (a.k.a. Fafner) to explore the uncharted territory of the Paris-Marseilles freeway. It was a route theyโ€™d driven before, usually in about ten hours. This time, they loaded up with suppliesโ€”food, water, wine, typewriters, camerasโ€”and prepared for an arduous voyage of thirty-three days without leaving the autoroute, at a rate of two rest stops per day. Along the way they would uncover the hidden side of the freeway and take the notion of literature from a serious game to a logical, surreal extreme.

A love story, a travelogue, a collection of stories and snapshots, both visual and verbal, irreverent and brilliant.

Help us fund a reprint of our edition. Learn more here.

Want a discount? Become a member by purchasing Memberships or Gift Membership!

Praise

Idols invite respect, admiration, affection, and, of course, great envy. Cortรกzar inspired all of these feelings as very few writers can, but he inspired, above all, an emotion much rarer: devotion. He was, perhaps without trying, the Argentine who made the whole world love him.

Gabriel Garcรญa Mรกrquez

Anyone who doesnโ€™t read Cortรกzar is doomed. Not to read him is a serious invisible disease, which in time can have terrible consequences. Something similar to a man who has never tasted peaches. He would quietly become sadder ... and, probably, little by little, he would lose his hair.

Pablo Neruda
Despite the unpromising terrain of the autoroute, they make interesting discoveries daily. Much of the travelogue is humorous, yet itโ€™s also a serious book about โ€™slow travelโ€™ in which they subvert the autorouteโ€™s efficiency and find adventure in unexpected places.
Yaรซl Schlick, Toronto Star

Cortรกzarโ€™s last book is unexpectedly his happiest and most playful, both linguistically and with the vicissitudes of life ... Every page reveals that there is no end, because the end is to go farther, to cross all boundaries. Twenty years later Anne McLean restores the joy and liberty of the original to these autonauts. And it seems to me that Cortรกzar and Dunlop are still there, on their freeway, alive, happy forever inside a motionless time.

Tomรกs Eloy Martรญnez

This is a special book, definitely worth reading, one that will alter your view of highways forever.

Chad W. Post

The journey undertaken by Cortรกzar and his wife and collaborator Carol Dunlop is quixotic in the largest sense. At one level, it is an adventure stood on its absurd head. At another, it is something graverโ€”a mask of comedy concealing the enigma of an archaic smile."

Richard Eder, The Los Angeles Times Book Review

The diary they left of this journey is charming, ridiculous, and more substantive than anyone has a right to expect.

James Crossley, The Improbable
Driving a van that never leaves the motorway from Paris to Marseille, Dunlop and Cortรกzar explore a mysterious world full of car parks and botanical samples, crappy restaurants and their customers. A fascinating journal dedicated to โ€˜all the weirdos in the worldโ€™, it should take its place alongside Robert Louis Stevensonโ€™s travel diaries.
Nicolas Bourriaud, Frieze

Extras

Watch the trailer for the forthcoming documentary “Julio & Carol”:

See Carol Dunlop’s grave in Cimetiere de Montparnasse.

Watch a short illustrated film based on Cortazar’s tribute to Charlie Parker, โ€œThe Pursuerโ€:

Listen to a discussion of Autonauts on NPR’s All Things Considered.

Read an interview with Cortazar in The Paris Review.

Read Cortazar’s short story โ€œAxolotlโ€.

Read about how Cortazar’s short story โ€œBlow Upโ€ was adapted into the famous New Wave film.

Map out your own Autoroute journey through France.

Read a piece (en espaรฑol) on Julio Cortรกzar on Pagina/12.

You may also like…

A nonprofit press devoted to contemporary & classic world literature
232 3rd Street Brooklyn NY 11215