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Hopscotch: A Novel (Pantheon Modern Writers Series), by Julio Cortazar
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Translated by Gregory Rabassa, winner of the National Book Award for Translation, 1967
Horacio Oliveira is an Argentinian writer who lives in Paris with his mistress, La Maga, surrounded by a loose-knit circle of bohemian friends who call themselves "the Club." A child's death and La Maga's disappearance put an end to his life of empty pleasures and intellectual acrobatics, and prompt Oliveira to return to Buenos Aires, where he works by turns as a salesman, a keeper of a circus cat which can truly count, and an attendant in an insane asylum. Hopscotch is the dazzling, freewheeling account of Oliveira's astonishing adventures.
- Sales Rank: #23427 in Books
- Brand: Cortazar, Julio/ Rabassa, Gregory
- Published on: 1987-02-12
- Released on: 1987-02-12
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.00" h x 1.13" w x 5.18" l,
- Binding: Paperback
- 576 pages
Review
"The most magnificent novel I have ever read, and one to which I shall return again and again."
—C.D.B. Bryan, The New York Times Book Review
"Cortazar's masterpiece . . . The first great novel of Spanish America."
—The Times Literary Supplement
"The most powerful encyclopedia of emotions and visions to emerge from the postwar generation of international writers."
—The New Republic
"A work of the most exhilarating talent and interest."
—Elizabeth Hardwick
Language Notes
Text: English, Spanish (translation)
From the Inside Flap
Horacio Oliveira is an Argentinian writer who lives in Paris with his mistress, La Maga, surrounded by a loose-knit circle of bohemian friends who call themselves "the Club." A child's death and La Maga's disappearance put an end to his life of empty pleasures and intellectual acrobatics, and prompt Oliveira to return to Buenos Aires, where he works by turns as a salesman, a keeper of a circus cat which can truly count, and an attendant in an insane asylum. Hopscotch is the dazzling, free-wheeling account of Oliveira's astonishing adventures.
Most helpful customer reviews
112 of 116 people found the following review helpful.
Not for the plot-hungry, but worth it for enthusiasts
By Steven Reynolds
I suppose it's unreasonable to expect the world's first so-called hypertext novel - one in which you can read the chapters sequentially, or in an order recommended by the author, or in any other order you choose - to have a compelling plot. After all, plot relies on anticipation and surprise, both of which come from authorial control over how and when information is revealed. A lot of the delight in fiction comes from this, and most of the rest from character, theme and the texture of the language. Cortazar's revolutionary novel is big on the last few, but not unexpectedly fails to be very engaging when it comes to story. It's more of a character study, or rather an elaboration of a philosophical position through the depiction of certain people in a particular place and time, i.e. left-leaning international emigres in 1950s Paris, and later the locals in Buenos Aires, who spend most of their time smoking, drinking, listening to jazz, competing for affection, philosophizing about life, and trying not to be the creative geniuses they obviously know they are. There are some wonderful set pieces: the infamous Chapter 28 involving a baby in a darkened room; the afternoon a plank bridge is erected to join two hotel rooms on opposite sides of a busy Buenos Aires street; an elaborate booby trap of water-filled basins, tangled threads and ball-bearings to thwart a vengeful lover in the night; and, obviously, the hopscotch squares of the title which are drawn in the courtyard of an insane asylum. These incidents are all engaging, comic, and wonderfully laden with a metaphorical/philosophical import which serves Cortazar's embedded theme: that is, the conundrum of consciousness; the unending desire to break through "the wall" to the other side of life in order to achieve the "unity" we intuitively feel exists but to which there is no easy path. This is the novel's engine, but it does take a while to fire up. If slowly savouring 500+ pages of that kind of thing interests you, then you'll enjoy "Hopscotch" immensely. If it doesn't, then reading this novel will be somewhat like being trapped at a really bad party with drunk and depressive philosophy undergraduates who think they know everything about jazz. I had the urge to leave early, but I'm glad I stayed until the end. Eventually, someone shut the music off, opened all the windows, and in the silence of dawn something clicked.
104 of 114 people found the following review helpful.
"People who do not read Cortazar are doomed. Not to read him is a serious invisible disease." P. Neruda
By Jana L.Perskie
It has taken me years to sit down and finally make a serious commitment to read Julio Cortazar's "Hopscotch/La Rayuela." I cannot think of a better companion to devote a few weeks to, maybe even a bit longer - hey, whatever it takes! It depends on your reading speed and the time you take to savor the poetry of the author's language. So, be willing to make a small personal investment in this very special novel, and the reward you reap will be a worthy one. Julio Cortazar will take you to places you have never been before in literature, and may never experience again. I read "Hopscotch" over this past summer, after a thirty year delay. I can be real stubborn about putting off what is good for me!! Cortazar's imagination is boundless, his prose rich and luminous, his wit and sophistication rare, the dialogue brilliant, the plot...I won't attempt to describe that with a few adjectives. Wander through the extraordinary labyrinthine plot on you own - the way is yours to discover. I promise, you won't get lost!
My introduction to "La Rayuela", (which means hopscotch, like the children's game), is a personal story. I will make it quick. About 30 years ago, while living in Latin America, a friend told me that I reminded him of a character in a novel. The character, La Maga - the book "La Rayuela/Hopscotch." With personal interests at stake and much curiosity, I bought a copy in Spanish, which I read with some fluency at the time. After experimenting with which way to approach the novel, and trying both ways, I gave up...and just read the parts about La Maga. I was too impatient at that point in my life, and needed to become a mellower person, to read slower, with more of a sense of play and participation. And Cortazar wants his readers to participate - to make reading his book an interactive experience, not a passive one. I was and still feel touched when I remember my friend's comments regarding La Maga. She is a magnificent character and Cortazer's prose, his language, (Spanish), is exquisite. So, I thought I'd give it another try, in English, perhaps with better results. None! I just wasn't ready, I guess. That happens to me with fiction sometimes. I have to be open to the experience. However, after all these years, I still thought of Horacio Oliveira and La Maga from time to time. And why not? They are truly unforgettable. As I wrote above, I did make time, at last. For an adventure of a lifetime, I recommend you do the same.
When Julio Cortazar published "La Rayuela" in 1966, he turned the conventional novel upside-down and the literary world on its ear with this experiment in writing fiction. He soon became an important influence on writers everywhere. "Hopscotch" is considered to be one of the best novels written in Spanish. This is an interactive novel where readers are invited to rearrange its sections and read them in different sequences. Read in a linear fashion, "Hopscotch" contains 700 pages, 155 chapters in three sections: "From the Other Side," and "From This Side" - the first two sections are sustained by relatively chronological narratives and so contrast greatly with the third section, "From Diverse Sides," (subtitled "Expendable Chapters"), which includes philosophical extrapolation, character study, allusions and quotations, and an entirely different version of the "ending."
The book has no table of contents, but rather a "Table of Instructions." There, we learn that two approved readings are possible: from Chapter 1 through 56 "in a normal fashion", or from Chapter 73 to Chapter 1 to... well, wherever the chapters lead you. The instructions are all in your book and are extremely clear. At the end of each chapter there is a numeric indicator to lead the reader to the next chapter. One never knows where one will be lead. Due to its meandering nature, "Hopscotch" has been called a "Proto-hypertext" novel. Cortázar probably had this work in mind when he stated, "If I had the technical means to print my own books, I think I would keep on producing collage-books."
What is most important, as a reviewer, is to give you, the prospective reader, an idea of the narrative and the characters...and to tell you why reading this novel was such an extraordinary experience for me. Horacio Oliveira, our protagonist and sometimes narrator, is an Argentinean expatriate, an intellectual and professed writer in 1950's bohemian Paris. He and his close friends, members of "the Club," do lots of partying, drinking, and intellectualizing, discussing art, literature, music and solving the world's problems. Oliveira lives with and loves La Maga, an exotic young woman, somewhat whimsical, at times almost ephemeral who leaves behind her, like the scent of a light perfume, a feeling of poignancy and inevitable loss. La Maga refuses to plan her encounters with Oliveira in advance, preferring instead to run into each other by chance. Then she and Oliveira celebrate the series of circumstances that reunite them - although he knows well the places she frequents and is capable of causing at least a few planned surprises. Eventually, he loses La Maga, who loses her child. With her absence, Oliveira realizes how empty and meaningless his life is and he returns to his native Buenos Aires. There he finds work first as a salesman, then a keeper of a circus cat, and an attendant in an insane asylum.
As Oliveira wends his way through France, Uruguay and Argentina looking for his lost love, "Hopscotch's" narrative takes on an emotionally intense stream of consciousness style, rich in metaphor. Back In Argentina, Oliveira shares his life with his bizarre double, Traveler, and Traveler's wife, Talita, whom Oliveira attempts to remake into a facsimile of La Maga. The game of hopscotch is only developed as a conceit late in the narrative. It is first used to describe Oliveira's confused love for La Maga as "that crazy hopscotch." The theme develops as a metaphor for reaching Heaven from Earth. "When practically no one has learned how to make the pebble climb into Heaven, childhood is over all of a sudden and you're into novels, into the anguish of the senseless divine trajectory, into the speculation about another Heaven that you have to learn to reach too." The variations on the children's game are described as "spiral hopscotch, rectangular hopscotch, fantasy hopscotch, not played very often." The allusions continue and include some beautiful passages.
"Hopscotch" is much more than a novel. Ultimately, it is best left for each reader to define what it is for himself/herself. Pablo Neruda in a famous quote said, "People who do not read Cortazar are doomed. Not to read him is a serious invisible disease." I don't know whether I would go so far. Remember, I put off the experience for many years. But this is one novel that should be read during one's lifetime. It is brilliant and it is fun!
JANA
26 of 26 people found the following review helpful.
Spellbinding! One of the most fascinating novels I've ever read
By The Cultural Observer
Julio Cortázar (1914-1984) was an Argentine author who wrote prolifically during the Latin Boom that inundated the world with a wave of great novels. While readers who rummage through the literature of Spanish America first come across writers like Isabel Allende and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, these explorations would no doubt be rendered incomplete and pointless if they fail to acknowledge the work of this literary genius.
Julio Cortázar embarked on a life of letters as a poet. He was an admirer of the esteemed writer Jorge Luis Borges, a fellow Argentine who was a literary celebrity in his native country. Upon finishing his premier short story, Cortázar sought Borges for approval of his work, wondering if he was worthy of treading on the prosaic terrain over which his idol commanded with a sophisticated mastery. The older author gave him a thumbs up and thus set Cortázar off on a literary journey that gave the world a taste of his creative opus. In his illustrious career, Cortázar wrote a wealth of plays, poems and novels, the most famous of which is Hopscotch, or Rayuela as it was written in the original Spanish.
Hopscotch is not a novel for the systematic reader. It is a novel without a genre, a postmodern and experimental prose that plays like a game of hopscotch throughout its chapters. There is an abundance of metaphors, of connections, bridges, symbols, and artistic allusions. There are ejaculations of phrases in foreign languages and an interjection of aphorisms in verse. If history were to rewrite itself and eradicate all traces of Joyce, Hopscotch would have been the equivalent of Ulysses. The language is incredibly vivid, infinitely descriptive, colorful, sensuous, poetic, maddeningly abstract, and psychedelic. Cortázar urges one to participate in his prose and to divagate from the mental passivity of the female reader. One must come to this book with an open mind and faithfully follow and participate in this incredible novel's winding paths to fully understand the meaning of Cortázar's hypnotic writing.
Just as Cortázar is a master wordsmith, he is also an incredible sculptor of characters. The members of this novel are incredibly complex, obtuse, and curious, echoing bits and pieces of human personality that make us reflect on who we are and what we know. There are enigmatic hipsters like Étienne, Wong, Ronald, Babs, and Gregovorius. There is the neurotic pianist Berthe Trepat, the old man upstairs, the enigmatic Traveler, the sensuous Talita, the moribund child Rocamadour, and the painfully pragmatic yet mysterious La Maga. If you manage to hopscotch from one side of the novel to the other, another intriguing character is revealed, one who in fact embodies Cortázar. This is Morelli, the literary firebrand who attempts to deconstruct and reshape language and literature. Although Morelli does not play an active role in the novel, the true premise behind Cortázar's writing is revealed through the voice of this author. Finally, there is the hero, Horacio Oliveira.
Horacio Oliveira is a well-read bohemian who belongs to "the Club", a Paris-based group of eccentric intellectuals who seek the answers to life by meandering across the labyrinthine avenues of literature, art, music, and philosophy. We are first introduced to Oliveira as he searches for La Maga. He is an "amateur intellectual" whom the members of this Parisian intelligentsia regard as "very intelligent and alert, up to date on everything." Oliveira's life, however, is a great ennui. His erudition does little to quench his insatiable thirst, however, and pushes him to play a game of hopscotch towards an ideal, or as Cortázar would eloquently put, a Heaven where "one day someone would see the true outline of the world, patterns pretty as can be, and perhaps, pushing the stone along, you would end up entering the kibbutz."
Oliveira then decides that the Parisian metaphor no longer suited him, and he returns to Latin America, wending his way through Uruguay and Argentina to excavate that which was never unearthed in Paris. But his quest for purpose leads him towards a series of nebulous non-revelations that do little to answer his questions. Oliveira begins "to realize that you don't find those things in libraries." Throughout the novel, he criticizes realism and structure, craving for the innovative genius of a Boulez, an Ellington or a Tinguely. Little by little, he is edged towards a more pragmatic approach to life, even if he never gets there. The latter part of the novel reads almost like a downward spiral towards a maddening epiphany, and the epic close raises a number of questions without ever providing closure, inviting the reader to fabricate an ending of his own.
Ultimately, Hopscotch is much more than just a novel. It is a brilliantly written collage of radical ideas; a linguistic adventure for the participative reader; an experiment that hurls the mind into a whirlwind of art, literature, music and philosophy; a reflection for the loner. This no doubt is a book that deserves to be mentioned among the great modern classics. Although Cortázar is little known among North American literary circles, Hopscotch is just the kind of book needed to reintroduce his art to readers looking for something more than just the "average" novel. Truth be told, it takes more than just passivity to get through this literary maelstrom, but once you are able to understand the essence of the author's purpose and premise, you will literally be hopscotching across one of the most fascinating novels ever written.
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