Magification as bunny(-fication)
Résumé
The magic realism of the writer Julio Cortazar (1914_1984) is examined and celebrated in this chapter. Not the magic of ‘firstness’ or of daily life, or the magic of ‘secondness’ or consciousness; but the magic of ‘thirdness’ or of the uncanny and inexplicable is investigated. Daily life in Cortazar’s fiction is presented as routine and habitual; his personae find their world and lives entirely natural and typical; but we the readers, find their world bizarre, threatening and profoundly upsetting. Normality is a surface behind which black magic reigns. Humour, fantasy and playfulness are delightful surfaces to Cortazar’s stories; but a world out of joint, with no assurances of sanity or safety, lurks just beneath. Magic may seem delightful, but its realities are profoundly disturbing. Analyzing two Cortazar short stories, the combination of play and terror, detailed description and existence hidden behind facades, and the combination of politicized ethnography and fantasy, are explored here.