What the Mugwig Has to Say and Silvalandia – Julio Cortazar
What the Mugwig Has to Say & Silvalandia by Julio Cortazar, illustrated by Julio Silva, translated by Chris Clarke / 92-page paperback / ISBN 9781955190213 / published by Sublunary Editions
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The writer Julio Cortázar and the artist Julio Silva were fast friends, from the time, as Cortazar remembers, his younger compatriot “came to Paris from Buenos Aires in fifty-five and a few months later visited me and spent a night talking about French poetry.” The two would collaborate frequently, most famously with Silva providing the iconic original cover of Rayuela (Hopscotch), and most directly in the two slim books included here. In this svelte volume you will find the first ever complete translations of 1966’s Les discours du pince-gueule (translated here as What the Mugwig Has to Say) and 1975’s Silvalandia, translated from the French and Spanish respectively by Chris Clarke. This book thus becomes your token of admittance into the secret, absurd world shared the two Julios. The characters are colorful, the humor sly and dark, and the hosts, aforesaid Julios, ever charming.
Julio Cortázar (August 26, 1914–February 12, 1984) was an Argentine writer, teacher, and translator. One of the most original writers of his era, he combined elements of historical fiction and mystery with Surrealist tendencies and a penchant for distorting time. He is best remembered for his mastery of the short story form and the novel Hopscotch.
Julio Silva (1930–April 4 , 2020) was an Argentine sculptor and artist. He moved to Paris in 1955 and became a French citizen in 1967. Known for his monumental sculptures and expressive drawings, his work has been exhibited at Centre Georges Pompidou, Sainte-Croix in Poitiers, and more.
Chris Clarke is a literary translator and scholar currently based in Philadelphia, where he teaches French at the University of Pennsylvania. His translations include books by François Caradec, Éric Chevillard, Ryad Girod, Pierre Mac Orlan, and Raymond Queneau. His translation of Marcel Schwob’s Imaginary Lives was awarded the French-American Foundation Translation Prize for fiction in 2019, and his translation of Nobel Prize winner Patrick Modiano’s In the Café of Lost Youth was a finalist for the same award in 2017.
