Julio Cortazar on the nature of remakes

by Jeff Alford · February 28, 2016

Julio Cortazar on Roberto Arlt

Everyone is familiar with those hopeful exhumations we finally perform on certain books, movies, or music, and the almost always disappointing results; sometimes the fault lies with the work itself, sometimes with those who try to repeat what is unrepeatable, to revive for a moment one’s youth which closed its eyes and sunk its teeth into the fruit of time. Every once in a while, however, we emerge from a movie, a chapter, or a concert feeling the plenitude of a return encounter that does not entail loss, of an almost unspeakable eradication of age that carries us back to our first bedazzlements — all the more astonishing now that they are no longer shored up by innocence or ignorance.

-Julio Cortazar, from “Roberto Arlt: Notes on a Rereading”, introduction to Roberto Arlt’s The Seven Madmen (New York Review Books, 2015)

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Jeff Alford

Jeff Alford is a critic and book collector based in Brooklyn, NY and the Managing Editor of Run Spot Run. He is a contributor to Kirkus Reviews, Rain Taxi Review of Books and the New Orleans Review and author of the rare books and small press blog www.theoxenofthesun.com.