Status
Available
Call number
Genres
Collection
Publication
Bard / Avon Books (1975), Paperback, 573 pages
Description
When La Maga, his mistress, disappears, Horacio Oliveira, an Argentinian writer living in Paris, decides to return home to Buenos Aires, in a novel in which the chapters are designed to be read out of numerical order but in a set sequence.
User reviews
LibraryThing member fieldnotes
As Cortazar's Table of Instructions will inform you, "Hopscotch consists of . . . two books above all." Do not read the second one. A reader can volunteer to be launched after nearly every chapter of the relatively conventional narrative contained in chapters 1-56 (the first book) into a grab bag
The desultory and labyrinthine experience of integrating all of the scraps from the cutting room floor into the midst of an otherwise thought-provoking and well-crafted narrative, robs Cortazar's novel of its grace and is likely to rob many readers of their patience. It is an unusual sensation to be in the middle of a book and to have absolutely no idea how many pages separate you from the ending; just as it is unusually frustrating to lose your place when it means scanning back and forth through twelve jumpy chapters to find it. Perhaps the experience is meant to be more like life than reading.
Every time that I realized that the upcoming appendix-chapter that was about to draw my attention away from Horacio's existence was classified as "Morelliana" I sobbed inwardly and throttled imaginary songbirds. If you feel indulgent towards self-important amateurs who sit around and ramble about matters that have been written about with intelligence and skill, or if you like it when young novelists try to propound grand theories of aesthetics based mostly on the strength of their pride, you *may* have patience for Morelli's contributions, which, unfortunately, make up somewhere near half of the extra chapters. "What Morelli is looking for is to break the reader's mental habits." Thanks, I got it and I also understand that a reader can use Morelli as a lense to gain some insight into Cortazar's novel and into the sort of milieu that his characters inhabit. It's just that Cortazar is actually a gifted story-teller with a poet's attention to memorable and overlooked detail whose work draws no strength from these digressions.
To a degree, Horacio and his buddies suffer from a similarly vapid chattiness. If I had to spend an evening with his Club in Paris, I don't think I could become drunk enough to find them unpretentious.If this review seems harsh, it is because after reading "Autonauts of the Cosmosphere" I had very high hopes for Cortazar's other works.
On the bright side: "Hopscotch" is often comical and sharply phrased. It is interesting to watch Horacio struggle amongst his associates to satisfy himself with a small cast of women, even if those women suffer from the sort of wide-eyed, uninitiated magical simplicity that gets really old in the hands of the surrealists and their devotees. At least, the chapters set in an Argentinian mental hospital are fun as hell.
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of unimpressive quotations from good authors, awful literary theory attributed to "Morelli" and scattered narrative chapters that the plot can do without. This disruptive method of reading "Hopscotch" is most tolerant of its experiment with form, most in harmony with the psyche of the novel's protagonist and, perhaps, most in line with the author's intentions. It is how I read the book and I enjoyed it soooo much less because of that decision. The desultory and labyrinthine experience of integrating all of the scraps from the cutting room floor into the midst of an otherwise thought-provoking and well-crafted narrative, robs Cortazar's novel of its grace and is likely to rob many readers of their patience. It is an unusual sensation to be in the middle of a book and to have absolutely no idea how many pages separate you from the ending; just as it is unusually frustrating to lose your place when it means scanning back and forth through twelve jumpy chapters to find it. Perhaps the experience is meant to be more like life than reading.
Every time that I realized that the upcoming appendix-chapter that was about to draw my attention away from Horacio's existence was classified as "Morelliana" I sobbed inwardly and throttled imaginary songbirds. If you feel indulgent towards self-important amateurs who sit around and ramble about matters that have been written about with intelligence and skill, or if you like it when young novelists try to propound grand theories of aesthetics based mostly on the strength of their pride, you *may* have patience for Morelli's contributions, which, unfortunately, make up somewhere near half of the extra chapters. "What Morelli is looking for is to break the reader's mental habits." Thanks, I got it and I also understand that a reader can use Morelli as a lense to gain some insight into Cortazar's novel and into the sort of milieu that his characters inhabit. It's just that Cortazar is actually a gifted story-teller with a poet's attention to memorable and overlooked detail whose work draws no strength from these digressions.
To a degree, Horacio and his buddies suffer from a similarly vapid chattiness. If I had to spend an evening with his Club in Paris, I don't think I could become drunk enough to find them unpretentious.If this review seems harsh, it is because after reading "Autonauts of the Cosmosphere" I had very high hopes for Cortazar's other works.
On the bright side: "Hopscotch" is often comical and sharply phrased. It is interesting to watch Horacio struggle amongst his associates to satisfy himself with a small cast of women, even if those women suffer from the sort of wide-eyed, uninitiated magical simplicity that gets really old in the hands of the surrealists and their devotees. At least, the chapters set in an Argentinian mental hospital are fun as hell.
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LibraryThing member TakeItOrLeaveIt
The reader can become complacent in the non-stop hopscotch, or can find it rather irritating and become traversed in the daunting task that often times forces him to read a single-page chapter, skipping back three hundred seventy six pages to read a mere two pages before fast forwarding another
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four hundred and fifty five for what seems a pointless four paragraphs then backtracking five pages for two sentences. It is not without purpose though, as the further along the reader hops, the more the reader understands why he jumped from one square to the next. The author is allowed a new type of control but also an exploration of his own novel through this game of hopscotch. The illogical continuation becomes logical because the reader is not expecting a logical connection therefore never knows what to expect, and becomes trapped in a constant anticipatory state. This in itself is an existential feeling, a theory Horacio Oliveira returns to often in his debates with his other bohemian friends and members of The Club. The reader quickly recognizes the playful spirit of the author; and laughing along with the author’s practical joke can become as thrilling as a rollercoaster ride of constantly flipping from the ‘expendable chapters’ back to the pre-expendable aka chapters from ‘the other side’. However, the longer the reader spends in the expendable chapters (post chapter 56) the more accepting he becomes of the surreal and eventually melts into the dream landscape that is illustrated so gloriously by Cortazar himself, achieving the writers grand aspiration of painting with words. The reader escapes the Rembrandt of pre-56 and becomes confronted with a Magritte in the post-56. In a typical René Magritte painting, conventional objects are placed in an unorthodox context, for example, a steam train races out of a fireplace towards the unknown in his painting “Time Transfixed”. During the odyssey through the deserted desert of the expendable chapters, after short newspaper clippings, the odd Octavio Paz poem, numerous existential quandaries, and possibly a dream explanation or a sexual encounter, the reader will finally be rewarded with the return to the ‘reality’ of pre-56. While hopping back, he takes off his sand-drenched combat boots, puts on his lumberjacket and is transplanted back as a bohemian in Paris during the late 1950’s to a place where a pot of strong yerba mate is being procured by a familiar thin figure who poses as his muse, at which time the reader may or may not notice a sick infant sleeping nearby. “Perhaps that is why he chose the novel form for his meanderings, and published in addition what he kept on finding or unfinding.” (Cortazar p. 441) The reader has two options: to accept this constant travel between dimensions or to shut the book entirely, stand up, sit down and realize that the he is no longer Horacio Oliveira, Morelli, The Traveler, or Julio Cortazar but he was simply a reader seized in an expendable universe. “Only by living absurdly is it possible to break out of this infinite absurdity.”(Cortazar p. 111) Show Less
LibraryThing member HadriantheBlind
I admit more than an unhealthy skepticism towards postmodern literary experiments, and the subject matter of Hopscotch left me even more so. I was expecting the worst forms of John Barth-style literary masturbation with the tedium of Bohemian drinking parties.
Instead, Cortazar spins a playful
Instead, Cortazar spins a playful
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wandering story, and the innovating jumping chapters method, reminiscent of a "Choose Your Own Adventure" book, makes the events and moods of the story flow into each other very well. Each little chapter might not contribute to a 'story' in the traditional linear novel sense, but instead has a neat little parable-like meaning. Show Less
LibraryThing member billmcn
I love tricky experimental books, but I get impatient with authors who portray bohemian self-indulgence as anything deeper than a big party. So I guess I could have gone either way with Hopscotch, but for me Cortazar's Left Bank layabout characters annoyed faster than his unusual narrative
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structure charmed, and I gave up after the first few out of sequence chapters. Still, I remain intrigued and will probably return to this book someday. Show Less
LibraryThing member GlebtheDancer
Hopscotch is an odd novel, written as a series of short, staccato chapters that can be arranged at the whim of the reader. Cortazar suggests two schemes: reading only chapters 1-56 in order, or a longer route that involves reading all 155 chapters (excluding one) in an order set down at the start.
The first 56 chapters contain the bulk of the narrative. It follows the story of Oliveira, an Argentinian intellectual living in Paris. He is part of 'The Club', a group of intellectuals and Bohemians. Oliveira's mistress, known as La Maga, is a relative ingenue. She doesn't understand much of what the Club talk about, and is treated by them as a sort of pet, despite showing herself to be more than their equal when it comes to understanding other people. Oliveira and La Maga's relationship is strained, because he fails to understand his feelings for La Maga, largely because he tries to intellectualize them. When tragedy causes La Maga to run away, The Club drift apart, and Oliveira returns to Argentina alone, where he engages in a series of aimless employments, haunted by the spectre of his former lover. His distance from the Bohemian lifestyle of Paris allows him to reassess his relationship with La Maga, which has disturbing effects on his relationships with other people.
The extra, interpolated chapters are a mish-mash of ideas. They occasionally give deeper insight into the thoughts of characters and into the narrative itself. They also introduce Morelli, the putative writer of Oliveira's story (though Oliveira and other characters frequently discuss Morelli). There are also other quotes and ideas thrown in, some of which inform the narrative in obvious ways, others which are seemingly random. These interpolated chapters have the effect of creating an entirely different book, because the reader understands more about the motives behind narrative events (and occasionally the outcomes of them), creating a different set of tensions and altering their perception of the characters.
With such a complex book, and one so rich in ideas, it seems a bit anti-climactic to report that it was just okay. Not great, not terrible, but just okay. The narrative itself was interesting, and Oliveira is both intellectually complex and frailly human in a really believable way, but I found thoughts and conversations of him and 'The Club' truly irritating, over-intellectualized in a way that drove me crazy. It was a spewing out of ideas, an idea of life a sort of word-association game, that, I think, always sounds much cleverer than it actually is. I realise that it was part of the point to construct characters as antitheses to La Maga, but they were a bit much. The 56 chapter narrative is also largely built around 3 or 4 long set-pieces, a couple of which I found too absurd for words. The extremity of the characters' Bohemian posings really got in the way of me liking them, or even being interested in them.
As for the interpolations, they were very hit-and-miss. As I said, sometimes they turned the narrative, and my understanding of it, on its head, and sometimes a simple quote planted a seed that would germinate as the subsequent chapter unfolds. In this respect Cortazar was very successful, because he genuinely created very different books out of a single narrative. However, too often my mind skipped, or the interpolation did nothing for the narrative, and I felt like I had been swindled into reading a couple of extra pointless pages. Again, I think it is part of the point that the extra chapters help you as a reader create the book that you are reading, including the bits you skip or fail to understand, but sometimes I found it wearisome.
If I had my time again, I would read the 56 chapter narrative first, then contemplate re-reading with the interpolations. As it is, I can never go back because I have already read and understood Hopscotch one way, and cannot undo it.It was a tremendously interesting and ambitious work, but not one that was always successful.
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He also mentions that reading only the odd or even chapters is also acceptable. I suspect that many people, like me, read to the second scheme, because it is the only one that involves reading almost all of the book. The first 56 chapters contain the bulk of the narrative. It follows the story of Oliveira, an Argentinian intellectual living in Paris. He is part of 'The Club', a group of intellectuals and Bohemians. Oliveira's mistress, known as La Maga, is a relative ingenue. She doesn't understand much of what the Club talk about, and is treated by them as a sort of pet, despite showing herself to be more than their equal when it comes to understanding other people. Oliveira and La Maga's relationship is strained, because he fails to understand his feelings for La Maga, largely because he tries to intellectualize them. When tragedy causes La Maga to run away, The Club drift apart, and Oliveira returns to Argentina alone, where he engages in a series of aimless employments, haunted by the spectre of his former lover. His distance from the Bohemian lifestyle of Paris allows him to reassess his relationship with La Maga, which has disturbing effects on his relationships with other people.
The extra, interpolated chapters are a mish-mash of ideas. They occasionally give deeper insight into the thoughts of characters and into the narrative itself. They also introduce Morelli, the putative writer of Oliveira's story (though Oliveira and other characters frequently discuss Morelli). There are also other quotes and ideas thrown in, some of which inform the narrative in obvious ways, others which are seemingly random. These interpolated chapters have the effect of creating an entirely different book, because the reader understands more about the motives behind narrative events (and occasionally the outcomes of them), creating a different set of tensions and altering their perception of the characters.
With such a complex book, and one so rich in ideas, it seems a bit anti-climactic to report that it was just okay. Not great, not terrible, but just okay. The narrative itself was interesting, and Oliveira is both intellectually complex and frailly human in a really believable way, but I found thoughts and conversations of him and 'The Club' truly irritating, over-intellectualized in a way that drove me crazy. It was a spewing out of ideas, an idea of life a sort of word-association game, that, I think, always sounds much cleverer than it actually is. I realise that it was part of the point to construct characters as antitheses to La Maga, but they were a bit much. The 56 chapter narrative is also largely built around 3 or 4 long set-pieces, a couple of which I found too absurd for words. The extremity of the characters' Bohemian posings really got in the way of me liking them, or even being interested in them.
As for the interpolations, they were very hit-and-miss. As I said, sometimes they turned the narrative, and my understanding of it, on its head, and sometimes a simple quote planted a seed that would germinate as the subsequent chapter unfolds. In this respect Cortazar was very successful, because he genuinely created very different books out of a single narrative. However, too often my mind skipped, or the interpolation did nothing for the narrative, and I felt like I had been swindled into reading a couple of extra pointless pages. Again, I think it is part of the point that the extra chapters help you as a reader create the book that you are reading, including the bits you skip or fail to understand, but sometimes I found it wearisome.
If I had my time again, I would read the 56 chapter narrative first, then contemplate re-reading with the interpolations. As it is, I can never go back because I have already read and understood Hopscotch one way, and cannot undo it.It was a tremendously interesting and ambitious work, but not one that was always successful.
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LibraryThing member thorold
This is a book I've wanted to read for a long time, and have been putting aside "for when I learn Spanish". I've read quite a number of novels in Spanish in the mean-time, but this is by far the most challenging book I've attempted yet, and I'm conscious that I must have missed a lot of Cortázar's
I read it as an e-book, which should really be the best way to read it: if e-books had been available in 1963, I'm sure Cortázar would have had a lot of fun pushing the new medium to its limits. Finally, a tool that takes away the enforced linearity and sequential nature of the printed book. The e-book certainly does make it easier to follow Cortázar's complicated instructions. Instead of constantly leafing backwards and forwards, you simply click on a link at the end of the chapter and it takes you to the one the author suggested you should read next. However, this rather undermines the whole subversive nature of the book. It no longer feels wild and experimental to be leaping from Chapter 45 to Chapter 120 and back to Chapter 23 (or whatever it was): it's just button-pressing. What ought to happen, perhaps, is that the sequence of links is randomly generated for you at the moment you buy the book, and that your e-book is subtly different in its sequence from every other copy of the e-book. But we're not that far yet.
The real interest of the book is probably not so much its experimental form, but the playful elegance of Cortázar's writing. He manages to allude to just about everything you can think of — from Shakespeare and Proust to La Bohème and Tristram Shandy; from Dostoevsky to Henry Miller — but it never gets heavy, and he is always poking fun at himself for doing it. Similarly with jazz, which takes up a lot of space in the first part of the book, and even with classical music (the contemporary music concert given by a would-be Nadia Boulanger figure is one of the funniest chapters).
Definitely a book that lives up to the claim to be one of the great 20th-century novels: at the very least it's something you could unhesitatingly put side-by-side with La vie, mode d'emploi (and it's a good deal funnier than Perec, too).
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wordplay and allusions to other texts. But I'm looking forward to enjoying those next time I read it, when I will of course be taking the chapters in a different sequence...I read it as an e-book, which should really be the best way to read it: if e-books had been available in 1963, I'm sure Cortázar would have had a lot of fun pushing the new medium to its limits. Finally, a tool that takes away the enforced linearity and sequential nature of the printed book. The e-book certainly does make it easier to follow Cortázar's complicated instructions. Instead of constantly leafing backwards and forwards, you simply click on a link at the end of the chapter and it takes you to the one the author suggested you should read next. However, this rather undermines the whole subversive nature of the book. It no longer feels wild and experimental to be leaping from Chapter 45 to Chapter 120 and back to Chapter 23 (or whatever it was): it's just button-pressing. What ought to happen, perhaps, is that the sequence of links is randomly generated for you at the moment you buy the book, and that your e-book is subtly different in its sequence from every other copy of the e-book. But we're not that far yet.
The real interest of the book is probably not so much its experimental form, but the playful elegance of Cortázar's writing. He manages to allude to just about everything you can think of — from Shakespeare and Proust to La Bohème and Tristram Shandy; from Dostoevsky to Henry Miller — but it never gets heavy, and he is always poking fun at himself for doing it. Similarly with jazz, which takes up a lot of space in the first part of the book, and even with classical music (the contemporary music concert given by a would-be Nadia Boulanger figure is one of the funniest chapters).
Definitely a book that lives up to the claim to be one of the great 20th-century novels: at the very least it's something you could unhesitatingly put side-by-side with La vie, mode d'emploi (and it's a good deal funnier than Perec, too).
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LibraryThing member antao
(Original Review, 1981-05-15)
If you like your novels simple and straightforward, don’t read “Hopscotch”.
If you have an allergy to extended brainy digressions and convoluted debates, you better avoid “Hopscotch”.
If you abhor puns, double entendre and wordplay, I most seriously advise you
If you can’t stand literary, philosophical, musical and artistic references cramming your narrative, I sincerely prompt you to veer off taking “Hopscotch” from the bookseller’s shelf.
If you like your narrative to be free of phrases, expressions and vocabulary from languages you don’t know and don't care for, maybe “Hopscotch” is not a book for you.
Plot is definitely not what matters most in “Hopscotch”, but I’ll give you the gist of it anyway. Horacio Oliveira is an Argentine expat living in Paris and sharing rooms with girlfriend la Maga. They belong to a multinational group of young people who like spending soirées together discussing books and ideas while listening to jazz. One day Oliveira makes the acquaintance of obscure writer Morelli and then read some of his unpublished essays. Change of scenery: Oliveira returns to Buenos Aires where he meets former best buddie Manú Traveler and his wife Talita. He lives at close quarters and all three work together in a circus before accepting new jobs in a lunatic asylum.
That’s it; and yet so much more than that. As a novel “Hopscotch” seems most difficult to describe and categorise, its main interest lying in the adventurous linguistic tricks in which Cortázar famously excels. In a literary style clearly reminiscent of the French surrealists, he piles allusion upon allusion, citation upon citation to a point an honest soul might find openly extraneous. The references to authors, artists and musicians are so overwhelming one would suspect Cortázar of spending his days skimming aimlessly acros Wikipedia entries and lists had he written this novel last month. As it is, in the early 60s internet didn’t exist, and in any case the Argentine clearly knows what he’s talking about (although, in all honesty, he could be a bit less garrulous as regards his cultural tastes and influences, especially when so evidently outweighing their relevance to the narrative).
“Hopscotch” is famous for its unusual structure. Divided in 155 chapters of unequal length and split in three different parts, the reader is invited to take the novel following two different methods: either obeying the customary process of progressing from chapter I until the novel’s last page, or engaging in a ‘Table of Directions’ provided by the author and which displays a different order for the reader to follow. Those who choose the first are not required to go beyond chapter 56, the last part being comprised of ‘expendable’ material not wholly essential to the understanding of the novel (so implies Cortázar); the ones who prefer to follow the Table will jump from chapter to chapter along the book thus getting a more complete vision of the writer’s intention (or that’s what he says).
I suspect Cortázar of using these instructions in order to play with us. His theory relies on the fact that most readers are only interested in the classic plot and will therefore be thankful for being spared the third section of the novel where much relatively unrelated material - mostly theoretical - is hotch-potched. On the other hand, not only the first two sections are also filled with philosophical digressions but the last one includes chapters that provide snippets of the story after the events described in chapter 56. If the reader is really interested in knowing what happened he will do well to read some of this not-so-expendable material. Besides information accessory to the plot, this last part includes a number of pieces titled ‘Morelliana’ which expose Morelli’s literary conceptions that together form a kind of theory of the novel not uninteresting to get acquainted with.
There are two more features worth mentioning about “Hopscotch.” First, Cortázar’s novel is extremely humorous and can only be fully appreciated if taken on its playful grounds - the whole book can be interpreted as one big joke, though one of the chapters sounds clearly more serious in tone. Second, the Argentine’s interest in avant-garde literature and experimental narrative techniques inspires some of the most unorthodox moments in the novel: a whole chapter where two different accounts are overlapped and can only be individually understood if read every two lines in turn; a chapter where an obituary notice is transcribed according to an alternative spelling system where phonemes are ascribed an uniform phonetic realisation; glíglico, a language composed of imaginary vocabulary of amorous terms devised by la Maga and Oliveira. And many other ingenious concoctions.
To sum up, “Hopscotch” is not an easy read. One may even say you’ll only read everything if you’re curious enough about Cortázar’s techniques and don’t mind about brainy discussions and the many nods to high-culture. Jovial playfulness surely seems to be a prerequisite. But most of all, don’t worry if you don’t understand everything; Cortázar clearly wants to play with you and not everything he exposes in such a convoluted way is expected to be interpreted as more than an aesthetic incursion into the fabulous world of literature and art.
On the other hand, and to be honest, I sensed Rayuela's point was somewhere else, and I don't think I was wrong. If you ask me I think the male portraits are only sketches: they all sound alike to me, maybe with the exception of Ferraguto who doesn't sound like anything. But the women are something else; la Maga, Talita, even the few bits with Pola seem remarkably done. They're the only interesting people in the novel. The men are too boring, and bland, and chatty. The beauty of it is that Cortázar doesn't even say if he jumped/fell at all (but he was really surprised when Rayuela was called pessimistic and Oliveira - suicidal). He doesn't explain what happened to la Maga, by the way, not even in the expendable chapters. When it comes to female characters Cuca Ferraguto is my absolute favourite: charming, intelligent, oh wait…
NB: “Hopscotch” is sometimes quoted as one of the literary sources which inspired the Fighting Fantasy adventure books.
If you like your novels simple and straightforward, don’t read “Hopscotch”.
If you have an allergy to extended brainy digressions and convoluted debates, you better avoid “Hopscotch”.
If you abhor puns, double entendre and wordplay, I most seriously advise you
Show More
to stay clear of “Hopscotch”.If you can’t stand literary, philosophical, musical and artistic references cramming your narrative, I sincerely prompt you to veer off taking “Hopscotch” from the bookseller’s shelf.
If you like your narrative to be free of phrases, expressions and vocabulary from languages you don’t know and don't care for, maybe “Hopscotch” is not a book for you.
Plot is definitely not what matters most in “Hopscotch”, but I’ll give you the gist of it anyway. Horacio Oliveira is an Argentine expat living in Paris and sharing rooms with girlfriend la Maga. They belong to a multinational group of young people who like spending soirées together discussing books and ideas while listening to jazz. One day Oliveira makes the acquaintance of obscure writer Morelli and then read some of his unpublished essays. Change of scenery: Oliveira returns to Buenos Aires where he meets former best buddie Manú Traveler and his wife Talita. He lives at close quarters and all three work together in a circus before accepting new jobs in a lunatic asylum.
That’s it; and yet so much more than that. As a novel “Hopscotch” seems most difficult to describe and categorise, its main interest lying in the adventurous linguistic tricks in which Cortázar famously excels. In a literary style clearly reminiscent of the French surrealists, he piles allusion upon allusion, citation upon citation to a point an honest soul might find openly extraneous. The references to authors, artists and musicians are so overwhelming one would suspect Cortázar of spending his days skimming aimlessly acros Wikipedia entries and lists had he written this novel last month. As it is, in the early 60s internet didn’t exist, and in any case the Argentine clearly knows what he’s talking about (although, in all honesty, he could be a bit less garrulous as regards his cultural tastes and influences, especially when so evidently outweighing their relevance to the narrative).
“Hopscotch” is famous for its unusual structure. Divided in 155 chapters of unequal length and split in three different parts, the reader is invited to take the novel following two different methods: either obeying the customary process of progressing from chapter I until the novel’s last page, or engaging in a ‘Table of Directions’ provided by the author and which displays a different order for the reader to follow. Those who choose the first are not required to go beyond chapter 56, the last part being comprised of ‘expendable’ material not wholly essential to the understanding of the novel (so implies Cortázar); the ones who prefer to follow the Table will jump from chapter to chapter along the book thus getting a more complete vision of the writer’s intention (or that’s what he says).
I suspect Cortázar of using these instructions in order to play with us. His theory relies on the fact that most readers are only interested in the classic plot and will therefore be thankful for being spared the third section of the novel where much relatively unrelated material - mostly theoretical - is hotch-potched. On the other hand, not only the first two sections are also filled with philosophical digressions but the last one includes chapters that provide snippets of the story after the events described in chapter 56. If the reader is really interested in knowing what happened he will do well to read some of this not-so-expendable material. Besides information accessory to the plot, this last part includes a number of pieces titled ‘Morelliana’ which expose Morelli’s literary conceptions that together form a kind of theory of the novel not uninteresting to get acquainted with.
There are two more features worth mentioning about “Hopscotch.” First, Cortázar’s novel is extremely humorous and can only be fully appreciated if taken on its playful grounds - the whole book can be interpreted as one big joke, though one of the chapters sounds clearly more serious in tone. Second, the Argentine’s interest in avant-garde literature and experimental narrative techniques inspires some of the most unorthodox moments in the novel: a whole chapter where two different accounts are overlapped and can only be individually understood if read every two lines in turn; a chapter where an obituary notice is transcribed according to an alternative spelling system where phonemes are ascribed an uniform phonetic realisation; glíglico, a language composed of imaginary vocabulary of amorous terms devised by la Maga and Oliveira. And many other ingenious concoctions.
To sum up, “Hopscotch” is not an easy read. One may even say you’ll only read everything if you’re curious enough about Cortázar’s techniques and don’t mind about brainy discussions and the many nods to high-culture. Jovial playfulness surely seems to be a prerequisite. But most of all, don’t worry if you don’t understand everything; Cortázar clearly wants to play with you and not everything he exposes in such a convoluted way is expected to be interpreted as more than an aesthetic incursion into the fabulous world of literature and art.
On the other hand, and to be honest, I sensed Rayuela's point was somewhere else, and I don't think I was wrong. If you ask me I think the male portraits are only sketches: they all sound alike to me, maybe with the exception of Ferraguto who doesn't sound like anything. But the women are something else; la Maga, Talita, even the few bits with Pola seem remarkably done. They're the only interesting people in the novel. The men are too boring, and bland, and chatty. The beauty of it is that Cortázar doesn't even say if he jumped/fell at all (but he was really surprised when Rayuela was called pessimistic and Oliveira - suicidal). He doesn't explain what happened to la Maga, by the way, not even in the expendable chapters. When it comes to female characters Cuca Ferraguto is my absolute favourite: charming, intelligent, oh wait…
NB: “Hopscotch” is sometimes quoted as one of the literary sources which inspired the Fighting Fantasy adventure books.
Show Less
LibraryThing member DRFP
I tried, I really tried. But Hopscotch is simply too boring for me to finish. I read somewhere between 1/3 and a 1/2 of the book and even that was a struggle. For the most part, the odd 200 pages that I read merely involved people sitting around and talking pretentious nonsense. I realise that's
Oh, and the jumping between pages thing? Well, I'm afraid I have to deride that as nothing more than a gimmick. I'm sure, if you want, you can make up many pseudo-intellectual reasons for why the chapter skipping is so thoroughly brilliant but, for me, it did nothing.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie wrote that: "Sometimes novels are considered 'important' in the way medicine is – they taste terrible and are difficult to get down your throat, but are good for you. The best novels are those that are important without being like medicine; they have something to say, are expansive and intelligent but never forget to be entertaining and to have character and emotion at their centre." To my mind Hopscotch is like that awful medicine and, personally, I couldn't even take the whole dose.
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often "the point" but, personally, there's only so much of that I can take before I start to crave something more. I'm not afraid of challenging literature, this novel was simply uninteresting. I'm sure as a bundle of ideas it's a very interesting book but it's not an interesting story. It's all the more disappointing because I love Cortazar's short stories. I really expected something great here and it feels that all I got was an intellectual construct.Oh, and the jumping between pages thing? Well, I'm afraid I have to deride that as nothing more than a gimmick. I'm sure, if you want, you can make up many pseudo-intellectual reasons for why the chapter skipping is so thoroughly brilliant but, for me, it did nothing.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie wrote that: "Sometimes novels are considered 'important' in the way medicine is – they taste terrible and are difficult to get down your throat, but are good for you. The best novels are those that are important without being like medicine; they have something to say, are expansive and intelligent but never forget to be entertaining and to have character and emotion at their centre." To my mind Hopscotch is like that awful medicine and, personally, I couldn't even take the whole dose.
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LibraryThing member Eileen47
Another one I read twice in the 70s. Loved it then, got a lot out of it. The thought of slogging through the er philosophical discussions again is somewhat daunting but then those were far from the most interesting parts to me.
LibraryThing member delta351
Just beginning, but this book is like a car crash on the highway...
LibraryThing member jonfaith
He went back to sleep like a person who is looking for his place and his house after a long road in the rain and the cold.
I should pen an untimely aphorism detailing my experiences with Hopscotch. This is not that effort. It appears that I read the linear, sequential version of this novel in my
I felt inspired for my return to Rayuela by the curious examples of his short fiction and early novel Final Exam. That said, I don't think I anticipated depth of joy I would encounter. Maybe Morelli was waiting for my return as well. I'd like to visit him in the hospital, even if I don't like hospitals.
Nothing easier than putting the blame on what's outside, as if one were sure that outside and inside are the two main beams of the house. But the fact is that everything is in bad shape, history tells you that, and the very fact that you're thinking about it instead of living it proves to you that it's bad, that we've stuck ourselves into a total disharmony that the sum of our resources disguises with social structure, with history, with Ionic style, with the joy of the Renaissance, with the superficial sadness of romanticism, and that's the way we go and they can turn the dogs on us.
I listened to a great deal of Fats Waller and Sonny Clark during my reading. I'm conflicted on the assurances but heartily endorse this novel and a concurrent pondering of meaning and failure. I think differently now, especially towards strands of thread on the sidewalk.
I should pen an untimely aphorism detailing my experiences with Hopscotch. This is not that effort. It appears that I read the linear, sequential version of this novel in my
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mid-20s. I suspected such about midway through my more spirited reading of this last week. A phone call to Stephen J. Powell confirmed it. Apparently I gave Mr. Powell a copy of the novel and raved about it for weeks during the Clinton years. I barely recall such. Our reading group samizdat attempted a group read in the summer of 2001 but abandoned such after Roger growled that the characters should all get a job. I felt inspired for my return to Rayuela by the curious examples of his short fiction and early novel Final Exam. That said, I don't think I anticipated depth of joy I would encounter. Maybe Morelli was waiting for my return as well. I'd like to visit him in the hospital, even if I don't like hospitals.
Nothing easier than putting the blame on what's outside, as if one were sure that outside and inside are the two main beams of the house. But the fact is that everything is in bad shape, history tells you that, and the very fact that you're thinking about it instead of living it proves to you that it's bad, that we've stuck ourselves into a total disharmony that the sum of our resources disguises with social structure, with history, with Ionic style, with the joy of the Renaissance, with the superficial sadness of romanticism, and that's the way we go and they can turn the dogs on us.
I listened to a great deal of Fats Waller and Sonny Clark during my reading. I'm conflicted on the assurances but heartily endorse this novel and a concurrent pondering of meaning and failure. I think differently now, especially towards strands of thread on the sidewalk.
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LibraryThing member Othemts
Hopscotch (1966) by Julio Cortázar is my Around the World for a Good Book selection for Argentina. It's also a very complex novel following in a trend started by Gate of the Sun and Billiards at Half-Past Nine. I need to start reading pulp novels and mind candy from around the world. Hopscotch is
The novel follows Horacio Oliveira as he wanders around Paris obsessing over his lover La Maga. Horacio and his friends have deep philosophical conversations about love, art, jazz, and literature. Many chapters are pure dialog and philosophical meandering. There's lots of random sex and misery and one point a child dies tragically. Horacio returns to Buenos Aires and works a series of odd jobs including a circus and mental institution. Horacio falls for a woman who is a double for La Maga and slowly goes mad himself.
That's the basic gist, but wow is this a complex novel. It's beautiful and thoughtfully written but I just don't get it.
Author: Cortázar, Julio.
Title: Hopscotch. Translated from the Spanish by Gregory Rabassa.
Publication: Info. New York, Pantheon Books [1966]
Description: 564 p. 22 cm.
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particularly challenging in that it is the ultimate hypertext in that you can read it straight through chapters 1-59 (discarding the expendable chapters) , read it in a jumbled order of chapters prescribed by the author, or in any order the reader likes. I tried the second method until my innate need for linearity took over and I read 1-59 "with a clean conscience".The novel follows Horacio Oliveira as he wanders around Paris obsessing over his lover La Maga. Horacio and his friends have deep philosophical conversations about love, art, jazz, and literature. Many chapters are pure dialog and philosophical meandering. There's lots of random sex and misery and one point a child dies tragically. Horacio returns to Buenos Aires and works a series of odd jobs including a circus and mental institution. Horacio falls for a woman who is a double for La Maga and slowly goes mad himself.
That's the basic gist, but wow is this a complex novel. It's beautiful and thoughtfully written but I just don't get it.
Author: Cortázar, Julio.
Title: Hopscotch. Translated from the Spanish by Gregory Rabassa.
Publication: Info. New York, Pantheon Books [1966]
Description: 564 p. 22 cm.
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LibraryThing member DanielSTJ
I read this book both of the ways suggested. I must admit, though, I preferred the first way much better than the "Supplementary Fashion" in which to read it. Nevertheless, it was a stream of consciousness type romp through the mind, and words, of Cortázar and I was quite impressed by it. I do
4 stars.
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believe the author is worth exploring further.4 stars.
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LibraryThing member Griffin_Reads
The premise of this book, with two different methods of reading is really fun and I quite enjoyed this aspect of it. The language used can be difficult to follow at times, so there were points that I found myself not knowing what was going on at all, while there were other points that I understood
The parts I was able to understand were very enjoyable, so I would like to eventually reread this novel again when I can devote more time and attention to it, because I think that would really help me to see the beauty in this novel.
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quite well. It was the difficult-to-understand parts that make me give it a 2-star rating.The parts I was able to understand were very enjoyable, so I would like to eventually reread this novel again when I can devote more time and attention to it, because I think that would really help me to see the beauty in this novel.
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LibraryThing member jwhenderson
Hopscotch could irritate more than it impresses because it lacks any narrative action, yielding characters or merely voices—very articulate voices, to be sure. It is the epitome of what a modern anti-novel is not. When one is informed that the first half can "be read in a normal fashion" but the
He is living with one La Maga and sitting around drinking and talking—about jazz, painters, empirical ontology, illusion, time, identity, the Sartrean bit, or what he calls the ""giddy discontinuity of existence."" He returned to Argentina in the second section, met up with a couple known as the Travelers, and went to work with them in a mental health facility where they played hopscotch in a courtyard. The final section, which the author kindly calls the "Expendable Chapters," is a back-and-forth between the two universes interspersed with quotes, letters, notes, and other such materials. Cortazar's extraordinary versatility as a language artist allows him to express a wide range of concepts, recollections, and supporting associations. The richness of the cultural allusions makes one think of William Gaddis' recognitions. Then there's wordplay in Spanish, French, and occasionally a tongue that not even pig Latin can match. Since nothing has any reality, we have to start ex nihil."" Having started ex-nihil, one goes nowhere. But it can be fun to relax and enjoy the play of language in this postmodern classic.
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second must be read in the numerical chapter order 73-1-2-116-etc. concluding with 131, one can begin to question the work's aesthetic validity. Such a technique (pagination) was unsuccessfully employed in a French novel a few years ago. The first section of the jumbled 560 pages, to put it simply, is about Horacio Oliveira, who is described as "a conscious bum"," during his stay in Paris.He is living with one La Maga and sitting around drinking and talking—about jazz, painters, empirical ontology, illusion, time, identity, the Sartrean bit, or what he calls the ""giddy discontinuity of existence."" He returned to Argentina in the second section, met up with a couple known as the Travelers, and went to work with them in a mental health facility where they played hopscotch in a courtyard. The final section, which the author kindly calls the "Expendable Chapters," is a back-and-forth between the two universes interspersed with quotes, letters, notes, and other such materials. Cortazar's extraordinary versatility as a language artist allows him to express a wide range of concepts, recollections, and supporting associations. The richness of the cultural allusions makes one think of William Gaddis' recognitions. Then there's wordplay in Spanish, French, and occasionally a tongue that not even pig Latin can match. Since nothing has any reality, we have to start ex nihil."" Having started ex-nihil, one goes nowhere. But it can be fun to relax and enjoy the play of language in this postmodern classic.
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Subjects
Awards
National Book Award (Finalist — Translation — 1967)
Language
Original language
Spanish
Original publication date
1963
Physical description
573 p.; 6.8 inches
ISBN
0380003724 / 9780380003723