SOURCE: Borland, Isabel Alvarez. “Cortázar: On Critics and Interpretation.” INTI, nos. 43-44 (spring-fall 1996): 157-66.

In the following essay, Borland explores the role of protagonist/critic in several of Cortázar's short stories and essays.

En algún lugar debe haber un basural donde están amontonadas las explicaciones. Una sola cosa inquieta en este justo panorama: lo que pueda ocurrir el día en que alguien consiga explicar también el basural.

—Julio Cortázar, Un tal Lucas 66

Cortázar's writing overtly challenges and invites the reader to participate in the act of creation, engaging him/her to consider the creative act from multiple perspectives. He has explicitly dealt with his poetics in “Apuntes para una poética” (1945), and with a theory of the short story in Ultimo Round (1969). Starting with Rayuela (1963), a great portion of his fiction has been self-consciously dedicated to exploring the aesthetics of...