A Continuity of Parks Writing Style

 CONTINUITY OF PARKS

By Julio Cortazar

He had begun to read the novel a few days before. He had put it aside because of some urgent business conferences, opened it again on his way back to the estate by train; he permitted himself a slowly growing interest in the plot, in the characterizations. That afternoon, after writing a letter giving his power of attorney and discussing a matter of joint ownership with the manager of his estate, he returned to the book in the tranquility of his study which looked out upon the park with its oaks. Sprawled in his favorite armchair, its back toward the door–even the possibility of an intrusion would have irritated him, had he thought of it–he let his left hand caress repeatedly the green velvet upholstery and set to reading the final chapters. He remembered effortlessly the names and his mental image of the characters; the novel spread its glamour over him almost at once. He tasted the almost perverse pleasure of disengaging himself line by line from the things around him, and at the same time feeling his head rest comfortably on the green velvet of the chair with its high back, sensing that the cigarettes rested within reach of his hand, that beyond the great windows the air of afternoon danced under the oak trees in the park. Word by word, licked up the sordid dilemma of the hero and heroine, letting himself be absorbed to the point where the images settled down and took on color and movement, he was witness to the final encounter in the mountain cabin. The woman arrived first, apprehensive; now the lover came in, his face cut by the backlash of a branch. Admirably, she stanched the blood with her kisses, but he rebuffed her caresses, he had not come to perform again the ceremonies of a secret passion, protected by a world of dry leaves and furtive paths through the forest. The dagger warmed itself against his chest, and underneath liberty pounded, hidden close. A lustful, panting dialogue raced down the pages like a rivulet of snakes, and one felt it had all been decided from eternity. Even to those caresses which writhed about the lover's body, as though wishing to keep him there, to dissuade him from it; they sketched abominably the frame of that other body it was necessary to destroy. Nothing had been forgotten: alibis, unforeseen hazards, possible mistakes. From this hour on, each instant had its use minutely assigned. The cold-blooded, twice-gone-over reexamination of the details was barely broken off so that a hand could caress a cheek. It was beginning to get dark.
Not looking at each other now, rigidly fixed upon the task which awaited them, they separated at the cabin door. She was to follow the trail that led north. On the path leading in the opposite direction, he turned for a moment to watch her running, her hair loosened and flying. He ran in turn, crouching among the trees and hedges until, in the yellowish fog of dusk, he could distinguish the avenue of trees, which led up to the house. The dogs were not supposed to bark, and they did not bark. The estate manager would not be there at this hour, and he was not there. He went up the three porch steps and entered. The woman's words reached him over a thudding of blood in his ears: first a blue chamber, then a hall, then a carpeted stairway. At the top, two doors. No one in the first room, no one in the second. The door of the salon, and then, the knife in his hand, the light from the great windows, the high back of armchair covered in green velvet, the head of the man in the chair reading a novel.

Source: Blow-Up and Other Stories

( Note to the reader: Julio Cortazar (Argentinean writer) is one of my favorite Latin American writers. He was a great sensation in the literary circles of Kerala in the vibrant eighties when yours truly also got exposed to some unadulterated Latin American stuff.
Pablo Neruda once said, 'Anyone who doesn't read Cortazar 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'. I cannot agree more and anyone who has tasted Cortazar and Borges will assert that much of the fiction that one encounters these days is sadly insipid. This metafiction is an excellent example of Cortazar's genius.
To read a gripping story is to be transported into its fictional world. Certain stories creates the illusion that I am no longer reading the story but I am actually in the story. 'In continuity of Parks', Cortazar memorably evokes this experience of total immersion in a fictional text. This story seamlessly shifts from two realistic narratives, finally provoking a metaphysical uncertainty about which is the text and which is reality.
A business man reads a novel sitting in his high backed green velvet armchair in his study. The novel he is reading tells of a desperate but resolute murderer who follows an avenue of trees that leads to a house; he climbs the stairs and locates the study,… 'and then, the knife in his hand, the light from the great windows, the high back of armchair covered in green velvet, the head of the man in the chair reading a novel'. When the crime is about to be performed, the victim is revealed as the businessman sitting in the armchair at the opening. So at the climatic end, the real man reading a novel suddenly becomes a character in the novel just as the characters suddenly become 'real' to end the man's life.
Cortazar involves the reader, first by constructing the business man as the narrative point of view and then, without warning, abruptly shifting to the lovers. The rapid conclusion is a bit jolting, not only because the text ends just before the murder occurs, but because the reader was earlier positioned in the victim's point of view, assuming it to be reality.
Thus the text that the hero reads becomes the text in which he is read. The reader immersed in the thriller becomes the victim of the narrated murder, thus paying with his life the disappearance of the boundary between fiction and reality. Note the economy of words in this story. The ending line is superb, perfectly balanced, without any superfluous or gory words to describe a cool murder…In essence, the sign of great fiction!….PGR)

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Source: https://pgrnair.com/2021/02/20/continuity-of-parks/

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