Reviews

Fantomas Versus the Multinational Vampires: An Attainable Utopia by Julio Cortázar, David Kurnick

ediiike's review against another edition

adventurous fast-paced

4.0

codexmendoza's review

4.5

I wonder what Cortazar would think of the current moment we live in, where superheroes have become omnipresent multinational conglomerates themselves and I had never heard of the Russell Tribunal until I picked up this volume. 

I suppose, vastly unsurprised. Maybe more by the fact that Kissinger outlived him.

jimmylorunning's review against another edition

4.0

Imagine you are a "Great Argentine Writer, Contemporary" and you've just branched outside of literature into the real world of effects by attending the Second Russell Tribunal in Brussells. The purpose of the tribunal is to investigate human rights violations in Latin America. You're a bit depressed after hearing all the testimony, and you're doubly depressed because the conclusions of the Tribunal are purely symbolic and will not likely lead to any real changes. On top of that, most people will never hear of the Tribunal or read its crushing indictments.

When you get home, you stumble across a popular comic strip starring the masked superhero Fantomas. You've read other comics in this series before, but you decide to open it anyway and to your surprise you find yourself in its pages! And many other cameos by writers as well: Susan Sontag, Alberto Moravia, Octavio Paz, etc. Here you are, thinking what you did didn't matter, and yet you are in a popular comic strip. Well, what a better way to publicize the results of the Tribunal than to include it in a mad romp starring yourself or a version of yourself as seen through the Fantomas comic strip?

That's what Cortázar did. It's meta-meta-meta and fun-fun-fun and laugh out loud funny. There are parts that read a little like [b:If on a Winter's Night a Traveler|374233|If on a Winter's Night a Traveler|Italo Calvino|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1355316130s/374233.jpg|1116802]. And other parts that feel process oriented like [a:César Aira|88379|César Aira|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1361001372p2/88379.jpg]. For a very short book (I read it in a day), it's pretty good at pulling together a bunch of disparate elements and still keeping things interesting, thought provoking, and unpredictable.

beepbeepbooks's review against another edition

4.0

Really fun. Read some of Cortazar's short stories and they confounded me, not really making me feel good or bad, but like a puzzle that I wanted to figure out that I couldn't. I've also felt that way starting Hopscotch. This text is concise and clear, but does not take itself to seriously, and for a theory geek like me it's funny to see the narrator (a stand in for Cortazar) talk to both serious writers like Susan Sontag and masked marauders like Fantomas. Interspersed with actual comic strips and newspaper clippings, this is almost a primer for neoliberal globalization for the pulp reader. Keep on fightin the good fight Fantomas. But he also can't do it alone.

daneekasghost's review

3.0

First of all, it's gorgeous. Semiotext(e) put out a great physical book that I'm glad I got hold of.

It's short. I read it in one sitting including the appendix and afterword. It has an obvious agenda that seems a little more dated now than when it was originally published in 1975 - which is not to say imperialism and its effects are no longer a thing, just to say that this is a book that is written in response to a very specific moment in time.

Still, this was the first time I read Cortazar and I can see why he's well regarded. He's got style and inventiveness in spades. For me, in a book this short he didn't get to fully extend himself, so it was an interesting book, but one that I probably won't return to very often.