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A review by damianmurphy
Hopscotch by Julio Cortázar
5.0
As with MJ Nicholls, I couldn't stand this book the first time around. I bailed in the middle of chapter 20. I remember liking the "extraneous" chapters, but was put off by the banter among the members of the Serpent Club. They seemed painfully vapid in their intellectual posturing. It all came off as artificial.
A year went by. I started over at p. 383 (the first chapter in the Hopscotch sequence), read through the entire book, and loved every single word (with the exception of a few that come off as blatantly misogynistic—it seems that Cortázar himself acknowledged this, and offered somewhat of an apology, a few decades later). This wouldn't be the first time a book had to steep for a while before it became accessible to me. Many of the characters aren't tremendously likable (Horacio in particular), but I don't think that's what initially put me off the book. It had something to do with the subtle ideological rhythms and the approach to dialog, both of which I found compelling enough on my second attempt.
A large portion of this book's genius lies in the eccentricities of the narrative—the harrowing walk through the city with a humiliated singer after a dismally-attended performance; the surreptitious manner in which the Serpent Club conveys an absolute catastrophe among themselves without alerting La Maga, along with the unpalatable psychology behind it all; the whimsical, and very dangerous, game involving a pair of poorly-rigged planks that stretch between the third-story windows of two adjacent apartments; and the Rube Goldberg-esque arrangement at the climax of the book.
Other than that, there's not a whole lot I have to say about this book that hasn't already been said. I couldn't imagine reading the first two sections and ignoring the third. The latter contains some of the best material, as well as narrative elements that, to me, seem essential to the whole. The Morelli sections are the heart of the book, in my view, especially the section in which the Serpent Club makes an expedition to the author's apartment. Chapter 55, in book two, contains an edit of Chapter 133 from book 3, but without the conversation regarding Ceferino's text. The latter is no less than sublime. Cortázar, like Gekrepten, must have wrung his hands knowing that a portion of his readers would deny themselves its pleasures.
A year went by. I started over at p. 383 (the first chapter in the Hopscotch sequence), read through the entire book, and loved every single word (with the exception of a few that come off as blatantly misogynistic—it seems that Cortázar himself acknowledged this, and offered somewhat of an apology, a few decades later). This wouldn't be the first time a book had to steep for a while before it became accessible to me. Many of the characters aren't tremendously likable (Horacio in particular), but I don't think that's what initially put me off the book. It had something to do with the subtle ideological rhythms and the approach to dialog, both of which I found compelling enough on my second attempt.
A large portion of this book's genius lies in the eccentricities of the narrative—the harrowing walk through the city with a humiliated singer after a dismally-attended performance; the surreptitious manner in which the Serpent Club conveys an absolute catastrophe among themselves without alerting La Maga, along with the unpalatable psychology behind it all; the whimsical, and very dangerous, game involving a pair of poorly-rigged planks that stretch between the third-story windows of two adjacent apartments; and the Rube Goldberg-esque arrangement at the climax of the book.
Other than that, there's not a whole lot I have to say about this book that hasn't already been said. I couldn't imagine reading the first two sections and ignoring the third. The latter contains some of the best material, as well as narrative elements that, to me, seem essential to the whole. The Morelli sections are the heart of the book, in my view, especially the section in which the Serpent Club makes an expedition to the author's apartment. Chapter 55, in book two, contains an edit of Chapter 133 from book 3, but without the conversation regarding Ceferino's text. The latter is no less than sublime. Cortázar, like Gekrepten, must have wrung his hands knowing that a portion of his readers would deny themselves its pleasures.