 , Argentina Embassy in Ixelles,  | deathdate = February 12, 1984 | deathplace = Paris, France | occupation = Writer, Translator, Novelist | pseudonym = Julio Denis (in his first two books) | genre = Novel, story, poetry, prose poem, short story | movement = Magic realism | notableworks = ''Hopscotch''''Blow-up and Other Stories'' | influences = Jules Verne, James Joyce, Jorge Luis Borges, Marcel Proust, Tristan Tzara, Nouveau Roman, José Lezama Lima, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Edgar Allan Poe  | influenced = Thomas Pynchon, Georges Perec, Roberto Bolaño, Giannina Braschi, David Foster Wallace | website = |Nationality =   }}  '''Julio Cortázar''', born Jules Florencio CortázarMontes-Bradley, Eduardo. &quot;Cortázar sin barba&quot;. Editorial Debate. Random House Mondadori. p.35 Madrid. 2005., (August 26, 1914 &amp;ndash; February 12, 1984) was an Argentine writer. Cortázar, known as one of the founders of the Latin American Literary Boom, influenced an entire generation of Spanish speaking readers and writers in the Americas and Europe.   ==Early life==  Cortázar's parents, Julio José Cortázar and María Herminia Descotte, moved from Argentina in 1913 to Brussels, Belgium, where Cortázar was born on August 26, 1914.Cortázar sin barba, by Eduardo Montes-Bradley. Random House Mondadori, Editorial Debate, Madrid, 2004 At the time of his birth Belgium was occupied by the German troops of Kaiser Wilhelm II. Shortly thereafter the family moved to Zürich where María Herminia's parents, Victoria Gabel and Louis Descotte (a French National) were waiting in neutral territory. The family group spent the next two years in Switzerland, first in Zurich, then in Geneva, before moving for short period to Barcelona. The Cortázars settled in Buenos Aires by the end of 1919.Montes-Bradley, Eduardo. &quot;Cortázar sin barba&quot;. Editorial Debate. Random House Mondadori. p.110 Madrid. 2005.   Once in Argentina, his parents divorced a few years later. Cortázar spent most of his childhood in Banfield, a suburb south of Buenos Aires, with his mother and younger sister. The home in Banfield, with its backyard, was a source of inspiration for some of his stories.Banfield is mentioned in the short story [ Conducta en los velorios] from &quot;Historias de cronopios y de famas&quot; Despite this, he wrote a letter to Graciela M. de Solá on December 4, 1963 describing this period of his life as &quot;full of servitude, excessive touchiness, terrible and frequent sadness.&quot; He was a sickly child and spent much of his childhood in bed reading.[ Julio Cortázar - A fondo] TVE 1977 His mother selected what he read, introducing her son most notably to the works of Jules Verne, whom Cortázar admired for the rest of his life. In the magazine ''Plural'' (issue 44, Mexico City, May 1975) he wrote: &quot;I spent my childhood in a haze full of goblins and elves, with a sense of space and time that was different from everybody else's.&quot;  ==Education and teaching career== Cortázar became a primary school teacher when he was 18 (at that time, teacher´s degrees in Argentina were a diploma obtained after finishing high school and taking some more courses and exams). Although Cortázar never completed his degree in philosophy and languages at the University of Buenos Aires, he taught in several provincial high schools. In 1938 he published a volume of sonnets under the pseudonym Julio Denis.[ Conversaciones con Cortázar] Omar Prego, Muchnik Editores, 1985 (p.33) He later repudiated this volume. In a 1977 interview for Spanish TV he stated that publishing that book was his only transgression to the principle of not publishing any books until he was convinced that what was written in them was what he meant to say.[ Julio Cortázar - A fondo] TVE 1977 In 1944 he became professor of French literature at the National University of Cuyo. In 1949 he published a play, ''Los Reyes'' (''The Kings''), based on the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur.  ==Years in France== In 1951, Cortázar, who was opposed to the government of Juan Domingo Perón, emigrated to France, where he lived and worked for the rest of his life. From 1952 onward, he worked for UNESCO as a translator. The projects he worked on included Spanish renderings of ''Robinson Crusoe'', Marguerite Yourcenar's novel ''Mémoires d'Hadrien'', and stories by Edgar Allan Poe. He also came under the influence of the works of Alfred Jarry and the Comte de Lautréamont, and wrote most of his major works in Paris. In later years  he became actively engaged in opposing abuses of human rights in Latin America, and was a supporter of the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua.   Cortázar was married three times, to Aurora Bernárdez, to Ugnė Karvelis, and finally to Carol Dunlop. He died in Paris in 1984 and is interred  in the Cimetière de Montparnasse, next to Carol Dunlop. The cause of his death was reported to be leukemia.   ==Work and legacy== Cortázar wrote numerous short stories, collected in such volumes as ''Bestiario'' (1951), ''Final del juego'' (1956), and ''Las armas secretas'' (1959). English translations by Paul Blackburn of stories selected from these volumes were published as ''Blow-up and Other Stories'' by Pantheon Books (1967). The title of this collection refers to Michelangelo Antonioni's film ''Blowup'' (1967), which was inspired by Cortázar's story ''Las Babas del Diablo'' (literally, &quot;The Droolings of the Devil&quot;, an Argentine expression for the long threads some spiders and other insects leave hanging between the trees). Puerto Rican novelist Giannina Braschi used Cortázar's story as a springboard for the chapter called &quot;Blow-up&quot; in her bilingual novel &quot;Yo-Yo Boing!&quot; (1998) that features scenes with Cortázar's characters La Maga and Rocamadour. Another story &quot;La Autopista del Sur&quot; (&quot;The Southern Thruway&quot;) influenced another film of the 1960s, Jean-Luc Godard's ''Week End'' (1967). Another notable story, &quot;El Perseguidor&quot; (&quot;The Pursuer&quot;), was based on the life of the jazz musician Charlie Parker.   Cortázar also published several novels, including ''Los premios'' (''The Winners'',  1960), ''Hopscotch'' (''Rayuela'', 1963), ''62: A Model Kit''  (''62 Modelo para Armar'', 1968), and ''Libro de Manuel'' (''A Manual for Manuel'', 1973). These have been translated into English by Gregory Rabassa. The open-ended structure of ''Hopscotch'', which invites the reader to choose between a linear and a non-linear mode of reading, has been praised by other Latin American writers, including José Lezama Lima, Giannina Braschi, Carlos Fuentes, Gabriel García Márquez, and Mario Vargas Llosa. Cortázar's use of interior monologue and stream of consciousness owes much to James Joyce and other modernists, but his main influences were Surrealism, the French Nouveau roman and the improvisatory aesthetic of jazz. Cortázar also mentions Lawrence Durrell's ''The Alexandria Quartet'' several times in ''Hopscotch''.Sligh, Charles. &quot;Reading the Divergent Weave A Note and Some Speculations on Durrell and Cortázar.&quot; ''[Deus Loci: The Lawrence Durrell Journal]'' NS 6 (1998): 118-132. His first wife, Aurora Bernárdez, was translating Durrell into Spanish while Cortázar was writing the novel.  Cortázar also published poetry, drama, and various works of non-fiction. He also translated Edgar Allan Poe's 1838 novel ''The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket'' into Spanish as ''Narracion de Arthur Gordon Pym''. One of his last works was a collaboration with his third wife, Carol Dunlop, ''The Autonauts of the Cosmoroute'', which relates, partly in mock-heroic style, the couple's extended expedition along the autoroute from Paris to Marseille in a Volkswagen camper nicknamed Fafner.   In  Buenos Aires, a school, a public library, and a square in the neighbourhood of Palermo carry his name. The square is particularly well-known as a centre of a trendy and bohemian area with an important nightlife (sometimes referred to as &quot;Plaza Serrano&quot; or &quot;Palermo Soho&quot;)  In 2007 Bertrand Delanoë, the Mayor of Paris, formally named a small square on the Île Saint-Louis in honor of Julio Cortázar.  Duke University Press published a literary journal called &quot;Hopscotch: A Cultural Review&quot;, named after Cortázar's novel.   Mentioned and spoken highly of in Rabih Alameddine's novel, 'Koolaids: The Art of War', which was published in 1998.  ==Notable works== *''Axolotl'' *''Presencia'' (1938) *''Los reyes'' (1949) *''El examen'' (1950, first published in 1985) *''Bestiario'' (1951) *''Final del juego'' (1956) *''Las armas secretas'' (1959) *''Los premios'' (The Winners) (1960) *''Historias de cronopios y de famas'' (1962) *''Rayuela'' (''Hopscotch'') (1963) *''Todos los fuegos el fuego'' (1966) *''Blow-up and Other Stories'' (1968) :Originally published in Spanish as &quot;Ceremonias&quot; (Barcelona, Seix Barral), title by which is widely known in Spanish literary circles, and in English (translated by Paul Blackburn) as ''End of the Game and Other Stories'' :A compilation of stories translated into English from the books Final del juego and Las armas secretas *''Around the Day in Eighty Worlds (La vuelta al día en ochenta mundos)'' (1967) *''62: A Model Kit (62, modelo para armar)'' (1968) *''La noche boca arriba'' (1968) *''Last Round (Último Round)'' (1969) *''Prosa del Observatorio'' (1972) *''Libro de Manuel'' (1973) *''Octaedro'' (1974) *''Fantomas contra los vampiros multinacionales'' (1975) *''Alguien anda por ahí'' (1977) *''Territorios'' (1978) *''Un tal Lucas'' (1979) *''Queremos tanto a Glenda'' (1980) *''Deshoras'' (1982) *''Autonauts of the Cosmoroute (Los autonautas de la cosmopista'') (1983) *''Nicaragua tan violentamente dulce'' (1983) *''Divertimento'' (1986) *''Diary of Andrés Fava'' (''Diario de Andrés Fava'') (1995) *''Adiós Robinson'' (1995) *''Save Twilight'' (1997) *''Cartas'' (three volumes) (2000) *''Papeles inesperados'' (2009) *''Cartas a los Jonquieres'' (2010)  ==Further reading== ''English'' * Julio Cortázar (Modern Critical Views) / Bloom, Harold., 2005 *  * Julio Cortázar (Bloom's Major Short Story Writers) / Bloom, Harold., 2004 *  *  * Questions of the liminal in the fiction of Julio Cortázar / Moran, Dominic., 2000 * Critical essays on Julio Cortázar / Alazraki, Jaime., 1999 *  *  * The politics of style in the fiction of Balzac, Beckett, and Cortázar / Axelrod, Mark., 1992 * Writing at Risk: Interviews in Paris With Uncommon Writers / Weiss, Jason., 1991 *  *  *  *  *   ''Spanish'' * Discurso del Oso / children's book illustrated by Emilio Urberuaga, Libros del Zorro Rojo, 2008 *  * Imagen de Julio Cortázar / Claudio Eduardo Martyniuk., 2004 * Julio Cortázar desde tres perspectivas / Luisa Valenzuela., 2002 * Otra flor amarilla : antología : homenaje a Julio Cortázar / Universidad de Guadalajara., 2002 * Yo y Cortázar / Christina Perri Rossi, 2001 * Julio Cortázar / Cristina Peri Rossi., 2001 * Julio Cortázar / Alberto Cousté., 2001 * La mirada recíproca : estudios sobre los últimos cuentos de Julio Cortázar / Peter Fröhlicher., 1995 * Hacia Cortázar : aproximaciones a su obra / Jaime Alazraki., 1994 * Julio Cortázar : mundos y modos / Saúl Yurkiévich., 1994 * Tiempo sagrado y tiempo profano en Borges y Cortázar / Zheyla Henriksen., 1992 * Cortázar : el romántico en su observatorio / Rosario Ferré., 1991 * Lo neofantástico en Julio Cortázar / Julia G Cruz., 1988 * Los Ochenta mundos de Cortázar : ensayos / Fernando Burgos., 1987 * En busca del unicornio : los cuentos de Julio Cortázar / Jaime Alazraki., 1983 * Teoría y práctica del cuento en los relatos de Cortázar / Carmen de Mora Valcárcel., 1982 * Julio Cortázar / Pedro Lastra., 1981 * Cortázar : metafísica y erotismo / Antonio Planells., 1979 * Es Julio Cortázar un surrealista? / Evelyn Picon Garfield., 1975 * Estudios sobre los cuentos de Julio Cortázar / David Lagmanovich., 1975 * Cortázar y Carpentier / Mercedes Rein., 1974 * Los mundos de Julio Cortázar / Malva E Filer., 1970  ==Filmography== *''Cortázar'', 1994. Documentary directed by Tristán Bauer. *''Cortázar, apuntes para un documental'', Documentary. Eduardo Montes-Bradley (Director), Soledad Liendo (Producer). Theatrical release 2002. DVD Release 2007.Amazon.comInternational Movie Data Base * ''Graffiti'', 2005. Short movie based in Julio Cortázar´s short story &quot;GRAFFITI&quot;. Directed by Pako González.[  