Realidad fantástica en el camino. Coches y suspensión temporal en “La autopista del sur”, de Julio Cortázar, y “Autosole”, de Carlo Lucarelli

Abstract

Cars have imposed themselves peremptorily on our society, they have changed the life of human beings and life among human beings. This presence has been skilfully intercepted by many authors who have written fantastic stories about cars, such as Julio Cortázar and his La autopista del sur and Carlo Lucarelli and his Autosole. The stories share several elements: a) the narration unwinds along two similar motorways, though in two countries quite distant from each other, b) the characters represent the double of their cars, so much so that they identify themselves in the name of the car brand owned; c) the biological and the mechanical are fused: the car becomes the “carapace” of the human being (Mc Luhan) and men and cars form a single entity; d) there are two traffic jams where the time – space coordinates are loosened (the roads are no longer a place of transit but of life; time goes crazy and its flow is suspended). Starting from some anthropological reflections, this essay aims to show, using the two stories, how Cortázar and Lucarelli’s fantasies have in fact anticipated reality: on 14th August 2010, a huge traffic jam in China trapped thousands of drivers for over a month on National Expressway 110, which connects Beijing to Tibet…