Waking up is like a task: softening ( ablandar) something hard, opening up a passage ( abrirse paso), and tripping up ( topar) the world is an unwieldy object: maybe a block ( ladrillo), a sticky mass ( masa pegajosa), or a parallelepiped ( paralelepípedo). For this reason, he presents waking to us as if he were observing it for the first time, and as such lacks suitable words to define it. 1 It is immediately obvious that Cortázar’s aim is to make the daily experience of waking in the morning seem ‘strange’.

To appreciate this, it is sufficient to read (or re-read) the programmatic opening of the book: “La tarea de ablandar el ladrillo todos los días, la tarea de abrirse paso en la masa pegajosa que se proclama mundo, cada mañana topar con el paralelepípedo de nombre repugnante”. Shklovsky, Theory of Prose ( O teorii prozy, 1929 1 st edition 1925), translated by Benjam (.)ġThe most frequently-found technique in Julio Cortázar’s Historias de cronopios y de famas, which is characteristic of this work more than any other, is estrangement.