Historias de cronopios y de famas
1962
- folklore
- essays (single author)
- argentine fiction
- translations into english
- spanish fiction
- fiction, short stories (single author)
- narración de cuentos
- spanish language materials
- materiales en español
The story
"The Instruction Manual," the first chapter, is an absurd assortment of tasks and items dissected in an instruction-manual format. "Unusual Occupations," the second chapter, describes the obsessions and predilections of the narrator's family, including the lodging of a tiger-just one tiger- "for the sole purpose of seeing the mechanism at work in all its complexity." Finally, the "Cronopios and Famas" section delightfully characterizes, in the words of Carlos Fuentes, "those enemies of pomposity, academic rigor mortis and cardboard celebrity-a band of literary Marx Brothers."
What it’s like
Playful, slightly surreal, and bright on the page: short, quick sketches that read like pocket-sized absurdist fables, with the crisp, deadpan precision of an instruction manual or a catalogue entry turned loose on the ridiculous. The prose is clean and conversational, full of small domestic objects and everyday rituals stretched into odd logic, so the sensory world is one of kitchens, streets, and cluttered rooms rendered with a wry, tender eye. The vibe is whimsical with a note of gentle melancholy underneath, the kind of book you dip into on a lazy afternoon, on a train, or as a bedside read when you want to laugh quietly before sleep. Pacing is brisk; each piece lands and moves on, so it suits short sittings and readers who enjoy being surprised every few pages. Its emotional register is affectionate and mischievous, and its eccentric little figures (the cronopios, the famas, the narrator's ever-curious family) are drawn with warmth rather than cruelty. Intensity is very low: there is no violence, no gore, no sexual content, and little real fear; the strangeness is playful rather than threatening. It is for readers who want something gentle, inventive, and funny, and for anyone who loves language used as a toy.
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