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4.01 AVERAGE
4.01 AVERAGE
challenging
dark
reflective
El libro en sí me ha aburrido bastante. Se que es un libro para pensar y analizar pero es tanto lo que hay que hacerlo que llega a aburrir (por lo menos a mi me ha pasado eso). Los personajes no me han gustado para nada (en especial los dos principales), Horacio es tan frió y analítico, egoísta, solo se interesa en el y lo que busca (lo cual ni siquiera sabe que es, simplemente "el cielo", ni tampoco sabe como llegar a el) en su búsqueda de esto no le interesa pasar por sobre los demás o arruinarle la vida a sus amigos y personas que lo quieren. Por otro lado la Maga que la pintan de una forma completamente diferente a Horacio, es completamente indiferente, "colgada", muy irresponsable. En fin ninguno rescatable. La trama va y viene de incongruencia a incongruencia, el personaje principal pasa horas analizando temas (desde importantes a completamente vanales), se nombran demasiadas obras de artes, libros, canciones, textos, sinónimos y mas sinónimos, que llega a parecer el querer del autor de demostrar ególatramente cuando conocimiento y cultura general puede desplegar en un solo texto.
No puedo puntuarlo porque no me parece posible. El gusto que lo ponga cada cual. Creo que esta lectura es una experiencia, que cualquier cosa que se diga de ella es una mentira, por lo parcial y por lo incompleta. Pero no creo que sea una lectura imprescindible tampoco, no a estas alturas de la historia. Si alguien quiere introducirse, adelante y espero que disfrute.
'Hopscotch' is an experimental novel, which, truthfully, is as boring as reading a book on the history of philosophy. For the average reader, the book's value is in the postmodern discussions, the insider view of intellectual Paris in the 1950's, and deciphering it chapter by chapter. I think every reader who finishes the book can proudly give themselves several merit badges for an accomplishment many will applaud, and others will think you as mad as a postmodern philosopher.
I found Wikipedia and Google to be my best friends in the reading of the novel because I needed to look up the literally hundreds of famous intellectuals, artists and philosophers that the author name-drops.
'Hopscotch' is a very famous book few actually read except as a challenge. It is worth it. It's most famous attribute is that it is two novels - in one version, you can read it from chapter 1 to chapter 56 in order. The rest of the book, with chapters numbered 57 to 155 for convenience, are actually 'extra', not necessary, chapters, paraphrasing the author, which the author recommends reading in a certain, numerical order that is not consecutive along with the first 56 chapters again. In doing so, some depth is added and the ending is changed to a small degree. But he also says the reader can also choose to read the chapters in any order you want. The result is a lot of flipping back and forth, 'hopscotching'. The chapters are printed at the top of the pages, so it's not as difficult as it sounds to hopscotch.
What I think it's about: the 'hero' (not really) Oliveira wants a reality that makes abstract sense, but instead keeps coming up against a reality that is stitched together in moments of time that has no sense or reason except what the mind mediates from the information. He keeps rotating around the circumference of his mental circle (and milieu, and a circus, and an insane asylum) trying to grasp Reality, while the women (muses) are there already, in the center, where Oliveira thinks he wants to reach, on his good days. Despite his efforts, he feels he cannot bridge the gap between reality and himself, for 564 pages. In confronting death, twice, he learns the postmodern philosophies do not sustain him, but he is unable to 'be' in the world to save his life, so to speak.
Although I hopscotched, flipping dozens of pages forward, then back, per the author's recommendations, I noticed my mind insisted on stitching together the chapters into a sequential story or reality. I did not stop making a Timeline of the action. I mediated a coherency from the physical act of hopscotching around the book, per the author's recommended chapter reading. Whatever postmodern thought and experimentation explored on the nature of time in Art, it certainly cannot actually affect the natural workings of the brain to bring order to disorder. I also think that the book cannot be read in any old order, as the author claims. Some chapters must follow certain chapters in order to have any resemblance to a story of cause and effect. However, if the reader is seeking a total postmodern reading of examining chapter elements, a reading of chapters in no order is certainly called for, if I understand what postmodernism is supposed to be about; some kind of intellectual truth discovered by tearing apart objects to their basic elements, ignoring time and spacial qualities, to arrive at a true reality or at least, an understanding of the nature of reality and human perception of it.
Frankly, as I am a knitter, this is all horse manure to me, even if some really great Art has resulted. As a philosophy, it might make for a few insights, but a horrible way for a Universe to operate. Nevertheless , it's totally fun brain candy, like knitting patterns which use mathematical progressions for interesting row-by-row non-patterns (yes, they exist). http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-19208292. http://www.google.com/search?q=mathematical+knitting&hl=en&client=safari&tbo=u&tbm=isch&source=univ&sa=X&ei=uN47UKHWMo6GiQKO04DQBg&ved=0CF4QsAQ&biw=1024&bih=673
In the end, it's a comical book, full of sly jokes and intellectual nonsense (in my opinion). I think from reading between the lines that the author may once have believed postmodern thought of value, but later, not so much. While I think it's a joke novel, it is not written in the manner of a comedy, but rather as a deadly serious literary fiction.
You can decide for yourself what it's about, naturally.
Useful to read, when you're ready: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modernism
And: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodernism
I found Wikipedia and Google to be my best friends in the reading of the novel because I needed to look up the literally hundreds of famous intellectuals, artists and philosophers that the author name-drops.
'Hopscotch' is a very famous book few actually read except as a challenge. It is worth it. It's most famous attribute is that it is two novels - in one version, you can read it from chapter 1 to chapter 56 in order. The rest of the book, with chapters numbered 57 to 155 for convenience, are actually 'extra', not necessary, chapters, paraphrasing the author, which the author recommends reading in a certain, numerical order that is not consecutive along with the first 56 chapters again. In doing so, some depth is added and the ending is changed to a small degree. But he also says the reader can also choose to read the chapters in any order you want. The result is a lot of flipping back and forth, 'hopscotching'. The chapters are printed at the top of the pages, so it's not as difficult as it sounds to hopscotch.
What I think it's about: the 'hero' (not really) Oliveira wants a reality that makes abstract sense, but instead keeps coming up against a reality that is stitched together in moments of time that has no sense or reason except what the mind mediates from the information. He keeps rotating around the circumference of his mental circle (and milieu, and a circus, and an insane asylum) trying to grasp Reality, while the women (muses) are there already, in the center, where Oliveira thinks he wants to reach, on his good days. Despite his efforts, he feels he cannot bridge the gap between reality and himself, for 564 pages. In confronting death, twice, he learns the postmodern philosophies do not sustain him, but he is unable to 'be' in the world to save his life, so to speak.
Although I hopscotched, flipping dozens of pages forward, then back, per the author's recommendations, I noticed my mind insisted on stitching together the chapters into a sequential story or reality. I did not stop making a Timeline of the action. I mediated a coherency from the physical act of hopscotching around the book, per the author's recommended chapter reading. Whatever postmodern thought and experimentation explored on the nature of time in Art, it certainly cannot actually affect the natural workings of the brain to bring order to disorder. I also think that the book cannot be read in any old order, as the author claims. Some chapters must follow certain chapters in order to have any resemblance to a story of cause and effect. However, if the reader is seeking a total postmodern reading of examining chapter elements, a reading of chapters in no order is certainly called for, if I understand what postmodernism is supposed to be about; some kind of intellectual truth discovered by tearing apart objects to their basic elements, ignoring time and spacial qualities, to arrive at a true reality or at least, an understanding of the nature of reality and human perception of it.
Frankly, as I am a knitter, this is all horse manure to me, even if some really great Art has resulted. As a philosophy, it might make for a few insights, but a horrible way for a Universe to operate. Nevertheless , it's totally fun brain candy, like knitting patterns which use mathematical progressions for interesting row-by-row non-patterns (yes, they exist). http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-19208292. http://www.google.com/search?q=mathematical+knitting&hl=en&client=safari&tbo=u&tbm=isch&source=univ&sa=X&ei=uN47UKHWMo6GiQKO04DQBg&ved=0CF4QsAQ&biw=1024&bih=673
In the end, it's a comical book, full of sly jokes and intellectual nonsense (in my opinion). I think from reading between the lines that the author may once have believed postmodern thought of value, but later, not so much. While I think it's a joke novel, it is not written in the manner of a comedy, but rather as a deadly serious literary fiction.
You can decide for yourself what it's about, naturally.
Useful to read, when you're ready: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modernism
And: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodernism
Me encanto las frases y párrafos de este libro, y aunque no siento que fue un libro difícil de leer, me encanto el capitulo 7, y el capitulo 34 fue otro de mis favoritos pero si me falto algo para poderme enamorar de la historia, me hubiera gustado saber más de la Maga, pero estoy segura que después lo voy a leer pero no de la manera tradicional.
DNF 69%
Simplemente está historia no es para mí. No contecté con los personajes ni con el estilo de escritura. Entiendo la importancia que tiene dentro de la literatura latinoamericana pero obligarme a seguir con la historia simplemente va a empeorar mi ya deteriorada relación con este libro.
Los personajes me parecen bastante odiosos y sus platicas me resultan muy presuntuosas. Es un libro que presenta a un grupo de amigos extremadamente intelectuales y que desafortunadamente, a mí parecer, son muy superficiales y vacíos. La historia de amor no me parece que tenga ni una pizca de amor y no sentí ninguna química entre estos dos personajes.
Me da mucho gusto que sea un libro tan popular y que haya una gran cantidad de personas que lo amen pero sencillamente no soy una de esas.
Simplemente está historia no es para mí. No contecté con los personajes ni con el estilo de escritura. Entiendo la importancia que tiene dentro de la literatura latinoamericana pero obligarme a seguir con la historia simplemente va a empeorar mi ya deteriorada relación con este libro.
Los personajes me parecen bastante odiosos y sus platicas me resultan muy presuntuosas. Es un libro que presenta a un grupo de amigos extremadamente intelectuales y que desafortunadamente, a mí parecer, son muy superficiales y vacíos. La historia de amor no me parece que tenga ni una pizca de amor y no sentí ninguna química entre estos dos personajes.
Me da mucho gusto que sea un libro tan popular y que haya una gran cantidad de personas que lo amen pero sencillamente no soy una de esas.
One of my favorite books of all time! Cortázar's masterpiece is an innovative experiment in literature and literary form. This book is not simple and invites multiple readings yet the love story between Horacio and La Maga is very accessible. Hopscotch is like nothing I've read before or since.
You didn't go to the burial because although you renounce many things, you're still not capable of looking your friends in the face.Life is nothing more than the sum of a series of choices consciously made by and unconsciously made for you, for better or worse. Now that that odious banality is out of the way, I can say that in my reading of this, my need to stick to my habitual daily page count superseded both of the reading options recommended at the very beginning of this work: I read linearly from beginning through till the so-called 'Expendable Chapters', and from thereon would partake of the advised backtracks but never any forward jumps. Doing so meant hitting a recommended as permanently skippable section, losing out on rather pertinent contextualizations until a second readaround (sometimes) graced a section, and likely wasting quite a bit of time. Now that I'm through, I've realized that, when it comes to literature with a capital L, what it often boils down to is how one prefers their poison. The inevitability of death, the impossibility of true communication, the failure of art in the face of reality, the dehumanizing shortcuts one takes in the face of it all, the voluptuous musculature of the logos, the creativity of the transcribed metaphors, the inspiration of the applied references, the profound depths of the choice between life and death, the voracious grip of certain subjects on the right to use their own kith and kind as so many objects: what's your personal grasp on truth, and how far are you willing to go to defend it. Me, I committed to Woolf a long, long time ago, and while she doesn't speak so explicitly about cunnilingus (or did she?), I still find her preferable, to more or less of a degree, to the rest of the competition. At best, I integrate the Delanys, the Prousts, the Faulkners, the Bolaños, the Pynchons, the García Márquezs, the Wallaces, the Silkos, the Vollmanns, and all the rest into the infrastructure that will have (unlucky, perhaps) thirteen works of the originating skeleton within it by the end of this year. At worst, I harbor suspicions of payment, and training, and how easy it is for passively visual ubiquity to seep into your brain until a book is out of your bag and onto your shelves without you much remembering when you must have chosen to purchase it.
My favorite part? 23, and it was for the sake of the chance of more writing done in a similar vein of pathos (which was even, if briefly, fulfilled at times) that I kept up my chin for the rest of the narrative. My least favorite? 41, with 28 close behind, and every flip back or forward that either subsumed or grazed these two was always something of a trial. There's a lot of credit I could give this narrative, some of it even involving my drawing upon my willfully dilapidated skills in French, but much of it involves the same bloodlines that fuel my oh so unfashionable critiques, so there's not much point in spending too much time on either. As per usual, that peculiar breed of Catholic-guilt level doublethink, further cultivated by an obscenely high rating coupled with no small amount of "Best of ______" talk and a certain level of trendy Beyond the Pale-ism, abounds; if I let it win, I could talk about an ungrateful world, an oppressive past, an inhuman future, and persons scrambling through it all, half poisoned themselves, half poisoning others, all in the desire to connect. If I completely ignored it, I'd instead go on about how predictable this is in its pontificating about doing something new, and how much more I've gotten out of a single line of queer theory read during the middle of the sort of financially unstable pandemic that makes the whole bohemian Paris scene look so unbearably pathetic. If I had read this when I added it a decade ago, or even when I bought it six years ago, there's a high chance I would have actually committed to tracking all the names, real or unreal, and seen what all the fuss is about. Having gotten through that phase with healthy amounts of both welcome surprises and flabbergasted disappointments, at this stage, if I stumble across any of the referenced, majority white boy crowd in the future, it'll be the result of something better than a wild goose chase. 'Tis a shame, but if someone absolutely adored every single work on a list that was slowly but surely fed to them by, in certain sectors, an overwhelming multiplicity of self satisfied good intentioners, I'd have to wonder whether they were even bothering to read at all.
So: should you read this? If you've been following my reviews for any length of time, you already know how much of a curmudgeon I can be at times, so you've already decided to make up your own mind in the wake of consuming this review for entertainment purposes. For all my negatively tilted equivocation, I won't be discarding the other Cortázar work currently in repose on my shelves: looking at the cover still fills me with the thrill I felt when eight years of searching was finally rewarded with the acquisition of the battered paperback, and the more practical aspects of the work's age, theme, (comparative) brevity, and other compositional contexts makes it a likely candidate for one reading challenge or another. I will say that, in these days of Black Lives Matter, this text does little more than bloviate along like an especially edgelord hipster, and if you swapped out jazz for yoga as the major focus of the "intellectual" fapping, there'd be very little difference between the scenes described within these pages and certain sectors of today. There's plenty of ways to refute such and be all "Well how could you be so female-reader (a particularly noteworthy piece of jargon this work introduced me to) and think that he actually means it", but as I'm not being paid, I don't need to care. Not everyone wants to devote 550-750 pages to such, so consider this your fair warning. Fancy, fancy, schmancy. Jump, and let someone tell you how high.
Wishful thinking, perhaps; but that is just another possible definition of the featherless biped.
dark
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
