The short stories of Julio Cortazar belong to a Latin American tradition of fiction known as magical realism. Weird things occur in seemingly normal circumstances, such as a tiger having the free run of an ancestral home while people go about their daily business with bulletins warning them of which part of the house to avoid ("Bestiary"). Other stories have normalcy invaded by the sudden manifestation of spectral squatters who force the owners into exile ("House Taken Over") or a man turning into walking fish ("Axolotl"). Critic Terry Peavler distinguishes between four modes of magical realism in Cortazar’s work: the Mysterious, the Fantastic, the Realistic, and the Psychological.
That latter category is the one into which Cortazar’s most famous short story fits. Originally titled “The Devil’s Drool,” it is today usually found under the title by which it gained fame through its 1966 adaptation into one of the signature films of the British New Wave: “Blow-Up.” While that story is somewhat less bizarre in its introduction of the magical into the real world, it would be a mistake to categorize the other fictions as examples of surrealism, despite the admittedly surreal experience that often accompanies the reading. What separates Cortazar’s deep and abiding dreamlike weirdness from the world of official surrealism is that his plots are tightly constructed (unlike the wild and unconventional narratives that characterize surrealism), and despite the fact that fantasy intrudes, everyone treats the intrusion as perfectly normal—including, ultimately, the reader.
