Hopscotch , Julio Cortazar. As literary experimentation goes, the s was potent. It saw Thomas Pynchon leap on the stage with V.
John Barth split the metafictional gates wide open with Lost in the Funhouse , Donald Barthelme published short stories the likes of which no one had seen before. Ostensibly, the book is the story of Horacio Oliveira, an Argentine bohemian clambering through Paris.
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Condemned to beat his head against a brick wall that he knows only may be toppled by future generations, Oliveira is a wandering soul, a man obsessed with memory because the only thing that keeps him going is the question of whether or not any path he could have chosen would have led him to the same place.
The same thing happens to everybody, the statue of Janus is a useless waste, the truth is that after forty years of age we have our real face on the back of our heads, looking desperately backwards. It is what in all truth is called a commonplace. But even though Oliveira believes himself a failure, he is unable to resign himself to this fate. He is stuck in perhaps the most painful of positions, aware of the inadequacy of his world, but unable to stiffen himself to it:.
What poor tools we have to find a way out of this dungeon. His girlfriend, La Maga, is his infuriating opposite.
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A dilettante who constantly, unabashedly asks Oliveira the most basic questions about art and literature, she seems to be able to live life precisely as Oliveira wishes he could. She has transcended the question of which path to follow perhaps because she has never stopped to notice it. With her, Oliveira remains settled and stable, but after the two have been irreparably separated, Oliveira is filled with an unavoidable longing. The most remarked-on aspect of Hopscotch is its format: Readers may read straight through the regular chapters ignoring the expendable ones or follow numbers left at the end of each chapter telling the reader which one to read next eventually taking her through all but one of the chapters.
A reading of the book in that way would lead the reader thus: Take, for instance, chapter 34, written entirely in the following manner:.
Hopscotch by Julio Cortazar
In September of , a few months after the demise of my And the things she reads, a clumsy novel, in a cheap edition father, I decided to give up my business activities, transferring besides, but you wonder how she can get interested in things them to another house in Jerez whose standing was as solvent like this. In chapter 34 it is clear that Oliveira cannot keep his mind on his book.
It is up to the reader to interpret his frenzied thoughts and place them against the arc of the novel. As with chapter 34, so with the rest of Hopscotch: Cortazar chooses to perform because he does not believe his role as author is to feed information to a passive reader; rather Cortazar prefers that the reader collaborate, projecting herself into scenes that he aptly demonstrates.
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The matter is stated clearly in one of the expendable chapters, when Cortazar puts these words into a note by Morelli, a shadowy author whom we only see except for once through his writing and what others say about him:. High to Low Avg. A Novel Nov 25, Only 1 left in stock more on the way. A Novel Dec 04, Available for download now. Available to ship in days. Rituals for Love Zane Presents Jan 27, Only 2 left in stock more on the way. Only 3 left in stock - order soon. Recipe for Love Zane Presents Jun 25, You Might Just Get Burned: A Novel Zane Presents Aug 06, Provide feedback about this page.
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