Volume 25, Number 15 · October 12, 1978
The Not So Light Fantastic
By Michael Wood
Innocent Eréndira and Other Stories
by Gabriel García Márquez, translated by Gregory Rabassa
Harper and Row, 183 pp., $8.95
A Manual for Manuel
by Julio Cortázar, translated by Gregory Rabassa
Pantheon Books, 391 pp., $10.95
It used to be the fashion, in literary conversations and the fiercer sorts of criticism, to proclaim solemn and exclusive preferences for certain patches of an author's work: to praise the short stories of Henry James, for example, and grumble about the novels; to insist on the Baudelaire of the prose poems and disparage Les fleurs du mal. No doubt most writers are more of a piece than these easy divisions suggest, and criticism, one likes to think, is something more than the rattle of emphatic or excited opinions. So it would be a mistake simply to choose between the novels and the short stories of Julio Cortázar, or to use the novels of Gabriel García Márquez as sticks to beat his stories with. And yet, and yet.
Review, 3773 words
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