Feigned Money: Cortázar and the Priceless Lyric of Consumption

Abstract

The present study performs a thorough tour of the whole of Cortázar’s narrative work (novels and stories, not excluding some "micro-stories") to define the place and meaning that references to money and consumption have in this work. The reflection is triggered by the discussion of a "sentence" issued in 1974 by Ricardo Piglia ("Cortázar doesn’t speak about money"). This paper tries to show that this alleged silence is not so total. The consequences of that categorical denial present an image of Cortázar’s work that suit, at least, to be reviewed. For that purpose it is also given attention to some Cortázar’s poems, closely related to his fictions, which put in evidence that the Argentine author made of the consumer society and its distortions a recurring subject of his writing.