Julio Cortazar & Old Fashioned Enhanced Book

By Jason Boog 

In 1971, novelist Julio Cortazar published From the Observatory, a precursor to the author-created enhanced eBook. Archipelago Books will print the first English translation of the book in June.

Cortazar’s 79-page essay about desire, astronomy, eels, and an 18th Century Indian observatory  contained scores of pictures that Cortazar shot himself–black and white photos of an ancient structure blending perfectly with his dreamy prose. If you ever thought about including photographs in your own book or eBook, it is a great model to follow.

Check it out (PDF excerpt): “And so the black galaxy runs in the night
like the other golden one up above in the night runs motionlessly: why look for more names, more cycles when there are stars, there are eels born in the Atlantic depths that begin, because in some way we have to begin to follow them, to grow, translucent larvae floating between two waters, crystalline amphitheatre of medusas and plankton, mouths that slide in an interminable suction, bodies linked in the now multiform serpent…”

Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this post incorrectly identified the translation as a reprint.