Cronopios and Famas

ORIGINAL TITLE: Historia de cronopios y de famas
TRANSLATED BY: Paul Blackburn, © 1969
PUBLISHED: London, Marion Boyars; New York, Pantheon
ISBN: 0714525197, 0714525200
LCCN: gb-8955369, gb-9421907, 6915477

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Saturated with the starkness of the pampas, Cronopios and Famas is at once a disturbing and exhilarating collection of short, short vignette-proclamations. Containing little to do with anything and yet much to do with everything, I'd call this a surrealist's fairy-fragments, a lazy Sunday afternoon sundae that at once calls to be slurped in a gulp and teases us into enjoying it languorously.

Cronopios and Famas contains the following assortment

• The Instruction Manual
  • Instructions on how to cry
  • Instructions on how to sing
  • Instructions on or rather Examples of how to be afraid
  • Instructions on how to understand three famous paintings
    • Sacred Love and Profane Love, by Titian
    • Lady of the Unicorn, by Raphael
    • Portrait of Henry VII of England, by Holbein
  • Instructions on how to comb the hair
  • Instructions on how to dissect a ground owl
  • Instructions on how to kill ants in rome
  • Instructions on how to climb a staircase
  • Preamble to the instructions on how to wind a watch
  • Instructions on how to wind a watch
• Unusual Occupations
  • Simulacra
  • Ceremony and Protocol
  • Postal & Telegraph Service
  • The Loss and Recovery of the Hair
  • Aunt with Difficulties
  • Aunt, Explained or not
  • The Tiger Lodgers
  • Our Demeanor at Wakes
• Unstable Stuff
  • at the office
  • marvelous pursuits
  • vietato introdurre biciclette (bicycles prohibited)
  • the behaviour of mirrors on easter island
  • the possibilities of abstraction
  • the daily daily
  • a small story tending to illustrate the uncertainty of the stability within which we like to believe we exist, or laws could give ground to the exceptions, unforseen disasters, or improbabilities, and i want to see you there
  • end of the world of the end
  • headlessness
  • rough sketch of a dream
  • how's it going, lópez?
  • geographies
  • progress and retrogression
  • a very real story
  • story with a soft bear
  • theme for a tapestry
  • properties of an easy chair
  • scholar with a hole in his memory
  • plan for a poem
  • the prisoner
  • camel declared undesirable
  • discourse of the bear
  • portrait of the cassowary
  • flattening the drops
  • story with no moral
  • the lines of the hand
• Cronopios and Famas
  1. The First and Still Uncertain Appearance of Cronopios, Famas, and Esperanzas. Mythological Phase
     • NORMAL BEHAVIOUR OF THE FAMAS
     • DANCE OF THE FAMAS
     • GAYETY OF THE CRONOPIO
     • THE CRONOPIO BLUES
  2. Stories of Cronopios and Famas
     • TRAVEL
     • ON THE PRESERVATION OF MEMORIES
     • CLOCKS
     • THE LUNCH
     • HANDKERCHIEFS
     • BUSINESS
     • PHILANTHROPY
     • THE PUBLIC HIGHWAYS
     • SONG OF THE CRONOPIOS
     • STORY
     • THE NARROW SPOONFUL
     • THE PHOTO CAME OUT BLURRED
     • EUGENICS
     • HIS FAITH IN THE SCIENCES
     • NEVER STOP THE PRESSES
     • IMPROPRIETIES IN THE PUBLIC SERVICE
     • MAKE YOURSELF AT HOME
     • THERAPIES
     • THE PARTICULAR AND THE UNIVERSAL
     • THE EXPLORERS
     • EDUCATION OF THE PRINCE
     • PLACE THE STAMP IN THE UPPER RIGHT-HAND CORNER OF THE ENVELOPE
     • TELEGRAMS
     • THEIR NATURAL HISTORIES
       • Lion and Cronopio
       • Condor and Cronopio
       • Flower and Cronopio
       • Fama and Eucalyptus
       • Turtles and Cronopios