Hopscotch (Pantheon Modern Writers Series) [Paperback]

Julio Cortazar (Author), Gregory Rabassa (Translator)

Book Description

Release date: February 12, 1987 | Series: Pantheon Modern Writers Series

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.

Editorial Reviews

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)

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 576 pages
• Publisher: Pantheon; 1st Pantheon pbk. ed edition (February 12, 1987)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0394752848
• ISBN-13: 978-0394752846
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 1.2 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (49 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #13,530 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

82 of 85 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Not for the plot-hungry, but worth it for enthusiasts December 31, 2004

By Steven Reynolds

Format:Paperback

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. Read more ›

73 of 81 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars "People who do not read Cortazar are doomed. Not to read him is a serious invisible disease." P. Neruda September 5, 2005

By Jana L. Perskie HALL OF FAMEVINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

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 Read more ›

33 of 38 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The Great Julio's Collage January 31, 2002

By Doug Anderson VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

One thing you won't find in Julio Cortazar's many excellent short stories is anything in the way of biographical data and Cortazar is thus a mysterious figure to his readers who constructs fictions from some marginal unidentifiable place. If you want to know about Cortazar the man you have to research on your own. Born in Belgium(1914) to Argentine parents the family returned to Argentina after WW1 . Julio grew up and attended university and made a living as a translator(Poe and others). Though offered a university position he refused it in protest of the Peron government and thus spent many years teaching grade school(which may explain why so many childrens or naive adult prespectives are employed in his work) then he left for Paris sometime in the fifties. So in Paris he wrote in exile and played trumpet in a Jazz band and lived the life of the boheme until his death in 1984. Hopscotch therefore with its bohemian characters and situations may lead one to assume Horacio is a sort of fictional version of Cortazar. I thought that at first and that was one reason the book was so exciting because I already liked his stories so much. The book is exciting to a point but I think it demands more patience with its methods than some may wish to give it. You can't really compare it to a novel in any conventional sense because there is very little plot and the characters exist only in mere sketch form, we know them only by the ideas they have. This works in Musil, an author mentioned in Hopscotch, but Man Without Quailities is a novel with many dimensions(political, historical, cultural, social)whereas Hopscotch only has one dimension. Since the novel/collage is 564 pages you may find yourself tiring of Horacios thoughts. And I don't think Horacio is a fictional Cortazar.... I think Cortazar is writing a modern novel about a hyper modern creature. All of the things lacking in modernism are also lacking in Horacio. I think Cortazar may sympathize with Horacio but he is ultimately using him to show how lost someone can get when he is divorced from all those spheres of activity(political, historical, cultural, social)that modernism ignores. I read Hopscotch now differently than when I first read it. Now I perhaps see better that what is missing from it is a crucial part of it and perhaps such is the art of the collage artist. An art which remains incomplete...free in its unhibited exploration of the exile with no ties, yes, but as Janis Joplin said "Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose". Read more ›