The book is interesting, lively, original, witty and provocative...a remarkable work and an impressive contribution to critical debates on the novel. David Daiches Blurb

genial, como muchas veces, cortazar se diverte y te divierte en este libro. desde el primer cuento Orientación a los gatos, donde se trasluce su amor por esto animales, hasta el ultimo, un torbellino de placer para la vista. los mejores: Queremos tanto a Glenda, Recortes de prensa, Grafitti....

This incredible book of short stories depicts the profound intricacies and the rich variety of human passions, but it does so most particularly in "Todos los fuegos el fuego", the short story that gives its name to the book. Cortazar's talent as a writer allows him to mask his themes behind a cunning phrasing of words, which may cause surprise at times, and which provide the reader with the enormous pleasure of interpreting them, recreating the stories alongside with him.Cortazar displays, throughout these stories, his particular way of envisioning reality, and yet his conclusions, masked as literary metaphors or writing techniques, rise to become universal in the end, proving all of us that however unique we may feel, we still have our passions, our sufferings, and solitudes, in common. The ordinary aspects of life always vanish with Cortazar, giving way to the unexpected.

The first time I read this book I was very young. Since then I have keep on coming back again and again. Cortazar deserves to be widely read. The worlds he creates are unique. The exploration of reality opens your eyes to the unexpected. It saved me from horrible experiences.

Cortazar is one of the greatest author in our time, with a perfect sense of reality, he knows when he can introduce us to his world, incredible fantastic world, and this book is not the exception.................

I read Hopscotch four years ago and still can't get it out of my head. Cortazar's allusions alone can lead to the reading list of a lifetime, but his wry humor and self-deprecating cynicism keep the book from becoming pretentious, and his descriptions of love are downright tender. Like Kundera and Camus, Cortazar fuses narrative and philosophy. The only problem is that after you read Hopscotch, almost every other novel seems unbearably bland.

This book, a translation of Rayuela, is THE non linear novel that deals with emotion. It has nothing to do with postmodernism as other reviewer suggests: the Spanish language tends to build longer sentences than american english. This is not a novel that short attention span readers would easily grasp. There's Tolstoi's War and Peace, Joyce's Ulysses, and other novels like this one, that require full immersion. In Hopscotch, the reader is the protagonist while choosing the path that will tie the story together. If you have never read non american authors, or are unfamiliar with Cortazar, I would suggest you start with any of his short story books.

It's been a while since I read Hopscotch. My memory of it is vague, but it made a considerable impression on me. It is one of those peculiar novels that has long, boring stretches, that you continue reading because you are convinced that there is a secret there, and you believe that you must persist in reading the book in order to uncover this secret. There are long passages where Oliveira and his little literary coterie sit around in Paris and listen to jazz gossiping and spinning out wild theories and being clever, and these passages can be unbelievably tedious. But you keep reading.

I recently read an interesting interview with Cortazar in the Review of Contemporary Fiction that may be of interest to some of you. Here's Cortazar on Hopscotch (Rayuela): "There have been critics who have thought Rayuela to be a profoundly pessimistic book in the sense that it only laments the state of affairs. I believe it is a profoundly optimistic book because Oliveira, despite his quarrelsome nature, as we Argentinians say, his fits of anger, his mental mediocrity, his head against all that because he is essentially an optimist, because he believes that one day, not for him but for others, that wall will fall and on the other side will be the kibbutz of desire, the millennium, authentic man, the humanity he's dreamt of but which had not been a reality until that moment. Rayuela was written before my political and ideological stand, before my first trip to Cuba. I realized many years later that Oliveira is a little like Lenin, and don't take this as a pretense. It is an analogy in the sense that both are optimists, each in his own way. Lenin would not have fought so if he had not believed in man. One must believe in man. Lenin is profoundly optimistic, the same as Trotsky. Just as Stalin is a pessimist, Lenin and Trotsky are optimists. And Oliveira in his small, mediocre way is also. Because the alternative is to shoot oneself or simply keep on living and accepting all that is good in life. The Western world has many good things. So the general idea in Rayuela is the realization of failure and the hope to triumph. The book proposes no solutions; it limits itself simply to showing the possible ways of knocking down the wall to see what's on the other side."

If you can find a copy of Cortazar's A Manual for Manuel, it is interesting as well -- Cortazar owned up to the fact that it was hastily written attempt to render revolutionary politics in an experimental literary form. I tried to convince the guy who runs Dalkey Archive Press to get the rights to publish A Manual for Manuel, and he wrote back telling me he had been trying for ages, but with no luck.

I read some of Cortazar's stories for a class in fantastic literature. From the moment I started reading the first story in this collection, Axolotl, I was hooked. Cortazar is such an amzing writer, has such a beautiful way of phrasing things and his stories always involve the unexpected and are completely up to many an interpretation. Make sure to read House Taken Over and Continuity of Parks, those two were my favorites. If you can, also obtain a copy of his story All Fires the Fire, another great fantastic tale. In short, Cortazar is an amazing modern writer that everyone should explore.

Julio Cortazar is probably one of the best writers of short fiction! I found a collection of his writing by accident years ago while looking through the latin american writers (I was obsessed with Gabriel Garcia Marquez.) I think that anyone would find his haunting characters and facinating story lines to be some of the most compelling in modern literature.

His stories are what I believe would happen if Ray bradbury were to write as beautifully and as mysteriously as J. D. Salinger.

Julio Cortazar reminds me more of the late great Spanish film director, Luis Bunuel, one of the founding fathers of Surrealism, who once remarked that, when writing a film, he always aimed for whatever was most disturbing in any given situation. Similarly, Cortazar's stories are all constructed around a disturbing vision. In "The End of the Game," for instance, three children don bizarre costumes and assume attitudes for the passengers on the trains that zip by them.

"Blow-Up" is very different from Antonioni's film. There is a menace in the interplay between the photographer, his unwitting subjects, and a third party who was watching both.

My favorite story in the collection is "The Pursuer," a nakedly brilliant study of a black American Jazz musician and the critic who never quite understands the demons that give birth to the music. The story is dedicated to Ch. P., who I assume is Charley Parker. Cortazar's musician lives on the edge and is plagued by disturbing visions as he spirals down into a personal apocalypse. The critic, on the other hand, tries ineffectually to help the musician, but is more worried about what people will say about his latest study of the musician's work.

Cortazar's stories take place in a kind of half-European, half-Latin Neverland. Born in Belgium of Argentinian parents, he spent most of his life in Europe. It is as if the author's self-exile gave birth to a demon of restlessness that possessed his characters.

Although this is the first Cortazar I have read, it will not be the last.

Siempre he pensado que el libro Final del juego es un verdadero manual de estilo y estructura para quien desee iniciarse en la escritura de relatos, y Las Armas Secretas es otra joya del género. Este volumen, siguiendo un critero inentendible, deja fuera algunos cuentos claves pero aún así es una estupenda manera de conocer a Cortázar y su fascinación con la posibilidad de conectarnos -a veces en los momentos y lugares más prosaicos- con otra realidad o con otra manera de funcionar en el mundo. Nunca le interesó el género de terror, pero algunos de estos relatos son escalofriantes y nunca le interesó el folletín, pero algunos también son lo más triste que he leído. Tal vez ambos factores se alimentan mutuamente. Cualquier lector serio interesado en saber qué pasó con el cuento en español en el siglo pasado debe pasar por tres tipos: Borges, Rulfo y Cortázar.

Primero, debo confesar que soy un fanático de Cortazar. Este libro reúne algunos relatos brillantes y otros que son difíciles de seguir. Pero debemos entender que muchos de los relatos de Cortázar transmiten sensaciones, estados de ánimo, más que argumentos o cadenas de hechos. Estas sensaciones son casi siempre vagamente opresivas, sutilezas que nos absorven a su universo que nos puede parecer real, pero que siempre hay algo que no encaja en esa realidad. Cuando nos dimos cuenta, ya nos ha transportado a su mundo de fantasmas y estamos compartiendo un sutil sufrimiento con el autor y las protagonistas. Por esta razon, Cortazar es un maestro. En su mayoria, sus relatos tienen complejos vaivenes de argumentos, que siempre termina sorprendiéndonos. Cortázar juega con nosotros, los lectores, para conducirnos de la mano hacia un mundo de sensaciones y sorpresas que termina maravillándonos por la destreza de su guía.

este libro es excelente. me encantaron los cuentos que tiene y ademas es mucho mas facil de leer que rayuela , el otro es un reto increiblemente delicioso para los lectores. este libro presenta casas encantdas, embotellamientos de traficos donde se recrean la absurdidad de la vida cotidiana y la ilusion de alguien que vive en dos mundos en la noche boca arriba. es una obra que se debe disfrutar despacion, un cuento a la vez para no perder el sabor a juego y anomalia que nos deja cortazar al leerlo.

LUIS MENDEZ crazzyteacher@hotmail.com

This book builds to less then nothing (for nothing can sometimes actually be exciting). Cortazar is impressive, no doubt, but his stuff is at its core is just gimmicks and mindtricks. No real substance. He writes like someone merely trying to impress his peers in his creative writing class, and maybe get laid by that cute girl in the corner. To say he influenced writers like Marquez elevates him too much. Marquez likely saw what Cortazar lacked and built on it from there. Fun to read like it's fun watching a magician, but that's as far as it goes.

62: A Model Kit is ably translated from Spanish for an English reading audience by Gregory Rebassa and is a novel of fantasy, comedy, cities, snatches of conversations, brief meetings, characters whose lives begin at any moment and end in intense, brilliant encounters with others on a train, poignant love making, and even restaurant dining. The construction is free and open, devoid of the usual restraints of traditional novelistic order and take the reader on a daring and exciting new approach to life itself. 62: A Model Kit written so deftly and daringly by the late Julio Cortazar (1914-1984) is enthusiastically recommended reading for anyone with an interest in pushing the literary envelope as exemplified by the format of the novel.

To summarize this book would be to discredit it. It must be read by anyone who is interested in the quirks and subtleties that haunt human action. It is not intended as a book of horror, or a humorous book for that matter, but this is what one will find in the most honest and purest sense of the words. The author would be scandalized by the application of such sentimental terms, but as I am not Mr. Cortazar, I am afraid this is the best I can do.