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A review by jimmylorunning
Autonauts of the Cosmoroute by Julio Cortázar, Carol Dunlop
4.0
La Osita and el Lobo, armed with the caps of mushrooms and cuneiforms forming nightvisions by sidetracked autobahns, carrying only the sin of excess imagination, travel en route of stopped time, which is a form of brussel sprouts, as by re-routing scientific observations about skylarks at rest while gliding in rest areas, they also find a way of being explorers like ancient ships do, clear to the back of the fog, or simply, with Fafner, their VW, sounding out the silences between trucks, like the hollow in the mouth of the waves that break against it, while headlights illuminate the interior soundtrack of a jellyfish, and by morn the "progress" which is a mourning of movement, of "passing", where the freeway becomes a habit that stings of peculiarity, each dream in its acuity bringing itself into deeper relief, like the lines in a face showing only memories, though we live in the 21st century, though we can still write a yellow book of celebration, though we can be anachronistic to the core, where a longing lurks within all its joy.
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All corny prosifying aside, and without recapping the content of the book (read the other GR reviews for that, they're good), I just want to say that there is a kind of subtext to this whole book of joy... that even though I believe their joy is genuine, I also feel like there is something forced about it. Not that they are lying, but that there is something they are fighting against, both in the world and within themselves perhaps, and that for this they must use all their imaginations. Something about this book, though deceptively casual and without consequence and completely joyful, is also kind of heavy with the weight of the real world.
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All corny prosifying aside, and without recapping the content of the book (read the other GR reviews for that, they're good), I just want to say that there is a kind of subtext to this whole book of joy... that even though I believe their joy is genuine, I also feel like there is something forced about it. Not that they are lying, but that there is something they are fighting against, both in the world and within themselves perhaps, and that for this they must use all their imaginations. Something about this book, though deceptively casual and without consequence and completely joyful, is also kind of heavy with the weight of the real world.