ABSTRACT
This chapter describes some of the after-lives of short stories by Juan Rulfo, Julio Cortazar and Augusto Monterroso: after-lives that bring out the internal features of the short stories; that actualize their productive potential. It analyses the hybrid, intermedial elements inscribed within the short stories themselves. An extension to this approach involves examining the varied fates of the short stories, the ways in which they are retold, or re-used, in different media: audio recordings, plays, films and even ballet. Monterroso's work, which self-consciously dissolves and dismantles the abstract cultural categories in which Latin American literature is entangled, serves to mediate between these two authors. The Latin American short story, in this way, is neither a purely literary phenomenon, nor an exclusive product of a popular tradition, nor a mere commodity in an emerging, globalized mass culture. Rather, its fragmentary form results from these interrelated cultures, from intersections and divergences, encounters and clashes, gatherings and dispersions.
