Porter Institute for Poetics and Semiotics The Rhetoric of Difficult Fiction: Cortázar's "Blow-Up" Author(s): Seymour Chatman Source: Poetics Today, Vol. 1, No. 4, Narratology II: The Fictional Text and the Reader (Summer, 1980), pp. 23-66 Published by: Duke University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1771886 . Accessed: 05/11/2013 16:44 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact
[email protected]. Duke University Press and Porter Institute for Poetics and Semiotics are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Poetics Today. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 206.87.122.163 on Tue, 5 Nov 2013 16:44:35 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE RHETORIC OF DIFFICULT FICTION Cortaizar's"Blow-Up" SEYMOUR CHATMAN Rhetoric,Berkeley "... I who am dead." Thus the narrator of Julio Cortaizar's "Blow-Up," but adds, immediately,"and I'm alive, I'm not tryingto fool anybody."How we understandthe bizarrecontradictions of modernfiction is, I argue,a rhetorical question. Since the world invoked by a fictionis not real, what are we (per)suaded to do? We can do nothingin thatworld, but we can do something withit, namely,accept or reject it.