Julio Cortazar's The Pursuer

Julio Cortazar’s ‘The Pursuer’ tells the story of character Johnny Carter and his music critic come biographer. Both Bruno, the music critic, and Johnny have very different approaches to music and what music means. As a professional music critic, Bruno has a very technical approach to music, which is evidenced in his descriptions of Johnny’s music throughout the story: “anyone could hear its deficiencies, the breathing perfectly audible at the ends of the phrase, and especially the final savage drop, the short dull note which sounded to me like a heart being broken,” (Cortazar: 220). The very fact that Bruno can and does manipulate words to describe music is what separates Bruno from Johnny. On the other hand, Johnny approaches music as an uncontrollable passion, and an escape from reality. To Johnny music is not something to be analyzed or perfected but rather felt.

Johnny was often at a loss for words when describing what music meant to him “I think the music helps, you know, not to understand, because the truth is I don’t understand anything,” (Cortazar: 187). We can understand as the reader that while music was an escape for Johnny it was also a very large part of him. Something he attempted to explain to Bruno when it was revealed that Bruno left things that out of his biography of Johnny; “Bruno, Jazz is not only music, I’m not only Johnny Carter,”(Cortazar: 239). Once again, we get the sense from this quote that music is a force larger than Bruno or