Research Catalog

Title

Fantomas versus the multinational vampires : an attainable utopia / narrated by Julio Cortázar ; translated by David Kurnick.

Author

Cortázar, Julio

Publication

• Los Angeles, California : Semiotext(e), [2014]
• Cambridge, Mass. : Distributed by MIT Press.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Additional Authors

• Kurnick, David
• Whitney Biennial (2014 : New York, N.Y.)

Description

87 pages; 21 cm

Summary

First published in Spanish in 1975 and previously untranslated, Fantomas versus the Multinational Vampires is Julio Cortázar's genre-jumping mash-up of his participation in the Second Russell Tribunal on human rights abuses in Latin America and his cameo appearance in issue number 201 of the Mexican comic book series Fantomas: The Elegant Menace. With his characteristic narrative inventiveness, Cortázar offers aquixotic meta-comic/novella that challenges not only the form of the novel but its political weight in contemporary cultural life. Needing something to read on the train from Brussels (where he had attended the ineffectual tribunal meeting), our hero (Julio Cortázar) picks up the latest issue of the Fantomas comic. He grows increasingly absorbed by the comic book's tale of bibliocide (a sinister bibliophobic plot to obliterate every book from the archives of humanity), especially when he sees the character Fantomas embark upon a series of telephone conversations with literary figures, starting with "The Great Argentine Writer" himself, Julio Cortázar (and also including Octavio Paz and a tough-talking Susan Sontag). Soon, Cortázar begins to erase the thin line between real-life atrocities and fictional mayhem in an attempt to bring attention to the human rights violations taking place with impunity in the country from which he was exiled.

Uniform Title

Fantomas contra los vampiros multinacionales. English

Alternative Title

• Fantomas contra los vampiros multinacionales.
• Multinational vampires

Subject

• Fantômas (Fictitious character)
• Russell Tribunal on Repression in Brazil, Chile, and Latin America > Anecdotes
• Russell Tribunal on Repression in Brazil, Chile, and Latin America > Fiction
• International business enterprises > Social aspects > Latin America
• Comic books, strips, etc. > Social aspects > Latin America

Genre/Form

• Anecdotes
• Fiction

Note

• Published as part of a series of publications for the 2014 Whitney Biennial.
• Originally published in Spanish: México : Excélsior,1975.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

ISBN

• 1584351349
• 9781584351344

OCLC

• 878501890
• SCSB-12214213

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library