Valeria Luiselli Reads Julio Cortázar

In this episode of The New Yorker Fiction Podcast, acclaimed writer Valeria Luiselli reads and discusses Julio Cortázar's seminal short story 'The Night Face Up,' originally published in 1967 and translated by Paul Blackburn. Luiselli reflects on Cortázar's profound influence on her generation of Latin American writers, describing him as a foundational figure whose sensibility—marked by wonder, sensory detail, and a playful yet serious approach to storytelling—shaped her own literary consciousness. She recounts reading the story as a teenager in a boarding school in India, where it became a touchstone for her love of literature. The episode delves into the story’s intricate narrative structure, which blurs the boundaries between modern reality and a dreamlike, ritualistic past centered on the Aztec Flower Wars. Through a close reading, Luiselli and host Deborah Treisman explore how Cortázar uses sensory immersion, temporal dislocation, and narrative tension to create a state of 'perplexity'—a condition that challenges readers to question the nature of reality. They examine the story’s dual timelines, the contrast between the modern man’s passivity and the 15th-century warrior’s acute awareness, and the deeper commentary on exile, modernity, and the loss of presence in contemporary life. The discussion also touches on the translation by Blackburn, with Luiselli offering nuanced critiques of certain interpretive choices that alter the original’s philosophical depth, particularly around the concept of time and the story’s epigraph. Ultimately, the episode presents 'The Night Face Up' not as a simple dream narrative, but as a meditation on the fragility of reality, the persistence of myth, and the writer’s responsibility to awaken wonder in the mundane.