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The Pursuer | Introduction

In 1959, the Argentine writer Julio Cortázar published a short story entitled “El Perseguidor” (“The Pursuer”) that vividly brought to life the bebop scene of 1950s Paris. Taking the final months in the life of the prodigious jazz musician Johnny Carter as its subject, the story is in many ways an exploration of the career and personal life of the famous alto saxophonist Charlie Parker, the most influential musician of the style of jazz music known as bebop. “The Pursuer” offers a glimpse into Johnny’s personal life, from his severe drug addiction and psychological instability to his profound philosophical insights, and it follows the key moments of Johnny’s relationship with his biographer and critic Bruno, the narrator of the story. With its daring narrative structure, which uses shifting verb tenses as a way of reinforcing its challenging conception of time and philosophy, Cortázar’s short story is clearly the work of a talented and ambitious writer. By the time he published his early short stories, such as “The Pursuer” in Paris, Cortázar had begun to establish himself among an international community of innovative writers. His depiction of the tensions between the critic and the artist, the theme of pursuit in art and life, and newly emerging philosophies of time and space, have earned “The Pursuer” a place among the classic texts of post-World-War-II literature. The story was originally published in the collection Las Armas Secretas (The Secret Weapons), but Paul Blackburn’s translation from the Spanish became available in End of the Game and Other Stories, published by Random House in 1963.

The Pursuer Summary

After a dedication to “Ch. P.,” which stands for Charlie Parker, a quote from the final book of the New Testament, and a quote from the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, “The Pursuer” opens with its narrator Bruno entering a trashed Paris hotel room. Inside, in “worse shape than usual,” sits his friend about whom he has written a biography, the prodigious jazz musician Johnny Carter, and his current girlfriend Dédée. Johnny is recovering from another bout of heavy drinking and drug use, he has once again lost his sax, and he is in a bad mood. While the three of them drink rum and coffee, Johnny talks about time, one of his “manias,” or intense obsessions, using the subway and an elevator as examples of time not working in a rational way.

Bruno tells Johnny that he will get him another sax and gets ready to leave, but while Bruno is saying goodbye to Dédée Johnny throws off the blanket that was covering his naked body. After giving Dédée some money and telling her not to let Johnny shoot up heroin before his first concert, Bruno leaves feeling grateful that Johnny would no longer make him see what he “didn’t want to see.”

Two or three days later, Bruno visits Tica, or “the marquesa,” a rich friend and sometime lover of Johnny, to find out if she has been giving him heroin, or “junk.” She is talking with two musicians, Art Boucaya and Marcel Gavoty, who are excited because of Johnny’s excellent recording session with them on the previous day. Although Tica made up with Johnny at the recording session, Bruno discovers that she had gotten into a fight with him two months earlier, so it must have been Dédée that has been giving him heroin. Then Johnny arrives, in “great shape” (with a moderate amount of drugs in his system) and... » Complete The Pursuer Summary