El examen
(Book)

RESUMEN: Un grupo de amigos (una pareja de estudiantes en vísperas de examen, un periodista de sonriente sarcasmo, su amiga, muchacha de irresistible candor) andan por la ciudad, a veces entreviendo la presencia (¿real? ¿imaginaria?) de otro amigo desaparecido. Andan por un Buenos Aires infinitamente cercano, prodigiosamente irrealizado. Un Buenos Aires donde se alza una casa en la que unos lectores cumplen con el ritual de leer en voz alta libros famosos. Un Buenos Aires en que muchedumbres abigarradas acuden al santuario erigido en la Plaza de Mayo, donde se exhibe un hueso. Un Buenos Aires invadido por una bruma y unos hongos inexplicables. Por la ciudad andan los amigos: hablan de sí, del país, del mundo, de los poemas que escriben. Lo definen y se burlan de sus definiciones. Ejercen un veloz intelectualismo y a la vez lo corroen con su ironía, tierna y feroz. Una constelación de metáforas, símbolos que no se dejan descifrar de inmediato, ilumina este relato maravillosamente ambiguo, insinuante de revelaciones que nunca se producen del todo. Relato fascinante, que anticipa atmósferas, situaciones, imágenes de las grandes novelas posteriores.

Long undiscovered, Final Exam, Julio Cortzar's first novel is a major work by this important Argentinian author, now available in English translation for the first time. In its characters, themes, and preoccupations it prefigures Cortzar's later fictions, including Blow-Up and his masterpiece Hopscotch. Written in 1950 (just before the fall of Pern's government), Final Exam is Cortzar's allegorical, bitter, and melancholy farewell to an Argentina from which he was about to be permanently self-exiled. (Cortzar moved to Paris the following year.) The setting of Final Exam is a surreal Buenos Aires, dark and eerie, where a strange fog has enveloped the city to everyone's bewilderment. Juan and Clara, two students at a college called "The House" (the Great Books are read aloud there by so-called Readers), meet up with their friends Andrs and Stella, as well as a journalist friend they call "the chronicler." Juan and Clara are getting ready to take their final exam, but instead of preparing, they wander the city with their friends, encounter strange happenings in the square, attend concerts, and discuss their lives in cafs. Final Exam is a fascinating literary experiment: with stream-of-consciousness narrative techniques, radical typographical innovations, and also shifts in rhythm and direction of its characters' thoughts and speech.

BSLW RECAT 2023