Continuity Of Parks By Julio Cortázar

Often, the lines between reality and fiction seamlessly intertwine and become so blurred that they appear to be indistinguishable from one another. In the short story titled “Continuity of Parks”, written by Julio Cortázar, the author is able to convincingly blend the realms of reality and fiction and present a literary puzzle for his audience to figure out where these two worlds actually intersect. By leaving much open to the reader’s personal interpretations, Cortázar’s “Continuity of Parks” offers an open investigation into the process of writing a convincing narrative that effectively immerses the reader within the fictional world the author sought to create. This short story provides the perfect metaphor of one’s passion for literature gradually becoming so immense that it completely consumes in the end.

In order to convey Cortázar’s passionate interest in reading and writing literature, it is necessary to highlight his upbringing as a child where he was first introduced to the world of literature at a very young age. Julio Cortázar was born on August 26th, 1914 in Brussels, Belgium to his Argentinian parents, Julio José Cortázar and María Herminia Descotte (Cortázar 12). At the age of four, his family returned back to Argentina where he would spend the rest of his childhood in Banfield, near Buenos Aires. When Cortázar was six, his father abandoned the family and he was left to live with his mother and his only sister. At their home in Banfield, Cortázar would spend much of his time in the backyard. It was there that he would receive the inspiration to write some of his most famous, future short stories, such as “Conducta en los velorios.” However, Cortázar described this period in his life as “full of servitude, excessive ...

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...erwhelming that it makes the reader feel as if they’re a part of the fictional world created in the story. If Cortázar’s audience responds to “Continuity of Parks” in the same manner The Reader responds to the novel, the end of the story will feel like a vivid dream where it becomes hard to separate the real world from what they were imagining. A true author’s responsibility is to create a world compelling and stimulating enough to allow the reader to lose their self within it. However, losing yourself can prove to be somewhat of a dangerous act, as it’s no coincidence that The Reader’s novel concerns themes of murder and betrayal. The story ends with a suggestion that the immersed reader is, at least metaphorically, on the brink of death. Cortázar implies that becoming engrossed in fiction is both a goal worth striving for and a way of losing hold of your identity.