Julio Cortazar “The Winners” (And I’m moving)

I apologize for the lethargic pace of posting in these parts — Mrs. BookFox and I are shifting residences, and my time has been filled with boxes and loan doc signings and moving vans. Also, it makes it more difficult to write when one can no longer find one’s desk, buried underneath mounds of miscelleana (which is a much nicer word than “trash,” isn’t it?).

Publishers: contact me for a new address.

One novel I would like to talk about briefly is “The Winners” by Julio Cortazar. Cortazar, as you well know, is one of the Spanish boom novelists, holding title with the likes of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Jorge Luis Borges, except he’s slightly less important, as indicated by the mere double name rather than the trifecta.

I purchased a gorgeous 1960s hardback copy of “The Winners,” from the first translation into English, rather than the 1999 version of NYRB Classics, which is probably the more affordable and easily located version (although book versions share the same translator — Elaine Kerrigan). As you can see from the image, it has a splotchy, camouflagey cover — my guess would be they wanted the colors to evoke the sea.

The basic concept is this: In Buenos Aires, a lottery has selected certain passengers to go on a mysterious cruise. They don’t know where they are going, or on what ship, or for what purpose. After they board, a certain segment of the deck is shut off from them, and, to be cryptic for the sake of preserving the narrative for the uninitiated, let’s just say a “struggle” occurs.

I would like to quote from “The Winners,” as is my habit, but it’s currently in one of the boxes of books (and there are many). I will say that as a reader, the political overtones are insightful. Cortazar doesn’t outright discuss political matters, but the relationship between the sailors and the passengers, with a struggle over information and power, mirrors the political strife occurring in South American in the ’60s.

The deeper meanings — not allegory, but any means, but analogous — snuck up on me as a reader. I finished the book enjoying the story; it was only afterwards that I started to see more of the layers. To me, that’s an indication that a book has accomplished it’s goals on multiple levels — the basic narrative is enough to hold the reader in the hypnotic narrative gaze, yet the underlying meanings are enough to hold the reader for days or weeks afterward.

If you’ve read “Hopscotch,” Cortazar’s most famous work, which offers numbered sections that can be read in order or in alternative orders, “The Winners” is just as dialogue heavy. Cortazar has a great ear for voice, and his work is often permeated by a multitude of voices. Thankfully, here he intersperses long stretches of dialogue with an inner Joycean monologue by a savant character on science, nature, and philosophy. The monologues can be difficult to power through, but they complicate the narrative, offering a strand that both opposes the action happening onboard and compliments it as well.

For Cortazar’s first novel, “The Winners” is quite a delight. Get a copy. For those of you who have read it, what did you make of the philosophical monologues?