 | By: Julio Cortazar Binding: Paperback Publisher: Pantheon Books Inc ISBN: 0394752848 ISBN-13: 9780394752846 Released: 01 May 1991 RRP: Average Rating:  |
I was introduced to "La Rayuela" about thirty years ago, when a close friend, with similar reading tastes, gave me the book. Enthused after just reading the novel, he told me that I reminded him of one of the characters, La Maga. (What a compliment...I think!). I was living in Latin America at the time. With personal interests at stake & much curiosity, I bought a copy in Spanish, which I read with some fluency back then. After experimenting with which way to approach the novel, & trying both ways, I gave up...and just read the parts about La Maga. I had little patience at that point in my life, & needed to acquire some, & to read slower, with more of a sense of play & participation. Cortazar wants his readers to participate - to make reading his book an interactive experience, not a passive one. I was & still feel touched when I remember my friend's comments regarding La Maga. She is a magnificent character & Cortazer's prose, his language, (Spanish), is exquisite. So, about a year later, 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 occasionallly. I have to be open to the experience. Yet, after alll these years, I still thought of Horacio Oliveira & 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 & 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. The work is interactive, where readers are invited to rearrange its text & read sections in different sequences. Read in a linear fashion, "Hopscotch" contains 700 pages, 155 chapters in three sections: "From the Other Side," & "From This Side" - the first two sections are sustained by relatively chronological narratives & so contrast greatly with the third section, "From Diverse Sides," (subtitled "Expendable Chapters"), which includes philosophical extrapolation, character study, alllusions & quotations, & 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 alll in your book & 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 callled 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."
Horacio Oliveira, our protagonist & sometimes narrator, is an Argentinean expatriate, an intellectual & professed writer in 1950's bohemian Paris. He & his close friends, members of "the Club," do lots of partying, drinking, & intellectualizing, discussing art, literature, music & solving the world's problems. Oliveira lives with & 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 & inevitable loss. La Maga refuses to plan her encounters with Oliveira in advance, preferring instead to run into each other by chance. Then she & Oliveira celebrate the series of circumstances that reunite them. Eventuallly, he loses La Maga, who loses her child. With her absence, Oliveira realizes how empty & meaningless his life is & he returns to his native Buenos Aires. There he finds work first as a salesman, then a keeper of a circus cat, & an attendant in an insane asylum.
As Oliveira wends his way through France, Uruguay & Argentina looking for his lost love, "Hopscotch's" narrative takes on an emotionallly intense stream of consciousness style, rich in metaphor. Back In Argentina, Oliveira shares his life with his bizarre double, Traveler, & 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 practicallly no one has learned how to make the pebble climb into Heaven, childhood is over alll of a sudden & 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 alllusions continue & 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 & it is fun!
JANA
Cortazar's acclaimed masterpiece represents his attempt to redefine both the novel form & the Spanish language. This is a novel whose chapters can be read in any order, although the author does suggest a preferred sequence which leads to the shattering climax described above. Rabassa's superb translation recreates alll the vibrance & verve of the Spanish original, alllowing English readers to glory in Cortazar's sublime world.
This is not an easy novel to read; Cortazar explicitly dismisses the passive reader, & in this text makes it impossible for him/her to understand what is happening. The effort required is well worth it, however, as the depth behind this, the quintessential 'Boom Novel', is incredible, & it will keep you coming back for years.
The best intellectual work-out I have yet experienced; give it a go!
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