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blueyorkie 's review for:
O Jogo do Mundo
by Julio Cortázar
With Hopscotch (transcribed from the Spanish Rayuela), the Argentinian writer Julio Cortázar signed in 1963 an experimental, singular, and surrealist novel, which appears as an attempt to deconstruct the traditional story.
The author offers us two directions of reading, a first which takes up in linear order the 56 chapters that make up a large half of the book, a second which proposes to us to alternate between these and the chapters composing the second part of the book. (we will find other fragments of the main story and reviews, reflections, articles, etc.). This "choice" left to the reader is ultimately entirely artificial, the first option coming back to sit on more than 200 pages and the main particularity of the book. However, the second solution has its originality, the advantage of causing the reader to lose his bearings, to push him to get lost in the book.
We will notice brilliant work on the characters' construction based on the story. In particular, those of Sybill and Horacio and the sweetish madness that seizes little by little show the mirror game between the protagonists (La Sybille / Talita - Horacio / Traveler).
Another strong point of the novel, the atmosphere of Paris in the 1950s, where the majority of the book takes place, is very significant: We find jazz, the smoky meetings of intellectuals (the famous Club meetings which occupy a good part of the novel), great ideas and picturesque characters. Add to that the subtle and absurd humor of Julio Cortázar, which is very palpable, and we find it sprinkled throughout the book.
The main plot is relatively thin for a novel of this size; we often follow the character of Horacio Oliveira, an Argentinian immigrant in Paris. His Sybill romance, a woman as mysterious as she is endearing, the meetings and intellectual debates with the members of the Club, then his flight (or his drift) in Argentina.
The leading black point is a lack of fluidity of reading and lengths, which weigh on the interest of the reader: it must admit that the minimal intrigue, the lack of real stakes, the singular division mentioned above, just like the meditations very abstract (sometimes accompanied by a deliberately pedantic style) of the characters can sometimes provide inevitable boredom, fortunately, tempered by a few jubilant flashes most often from the mind of Horacio.
It is an extraordinary book, which appears as a literary transposition of the New Wave of French cinema through which we feel Julio Cortázar's ambition to deconstruct traditional literature—a unique but very (too?) demanding reading experience.
The author offers us two directions of reading, a first which takes up in linear order the 56 chapters that make up a large half of the book, a second which proposes to us to alternate between these and the chapters composing the second part of the book. (we will find other fragments of the main story and reviews, reflections, articles, etc.). This "choice" left to the reader is ultimately entirely artificial, the first option coming back to sit on more than 200 pages and the main particularity of the book. However, the second solution has its originality, the advantage of causing the reader to lose his bearings, to push him to get lost in the book.
We will notice brilliant work on the characters' construction based on the story. In particular, those of Sybill and Horacio and the sweetish madness that seizes little by little show the mirror game between the protagonists (La Sybille / Talita - Horacio / Traveler).
Another strong point of the novel, the atmosphere of Paris in the 1950s, where the majority of the book takes place, is very significant: We find jazz, the smoky meetings of intellectuals (the famous Club meetings which occupy a good part of the novel), great ideas and picturesque characters. Add to that the subtle and absurd humor of Julio Cortázar, which is very palpable, and we find it sprinkled throughout the book.
The main plot is relatively thin for a novel of this size; we often follow the character of Horacio Oliveira, an Argentinian immigrant in Paris. His Sybill romance, a woman as mysterious as she is endearing, the meetings and intellectual debates with the members of the Club, then his flight (or his drift) in Argentina.
The leading black point is a lack of fluidity of reading and lengths, which weigh on the interest of the reader: it must admit that the minimal intrigue, the lack of real stakes, the singular division mentioned above, just like the meditations very abstract (sometimes accompanied by a deliberately pedantic style) of the characters can sometimes provide inevitable boredom, fortunately, tempered by a few jubilant flashes most often from the mind of Horacio.
It is an extraordinary book, which appears as a literary transposition of the New Wave of French cinema through which we feel Julio Cortázar's ambition to deconstruct traditional literature—a unique but very (too?) demanding reading experience.