I really would like to do a review on the magnificent book I finished yesterday, “Hopscotch”, by Julio Cortazar. The problem is that I am really not sure how to go about doing it. Sure, I could read a dozen other reviews, of the same book or another one equally intellectual. I could try to find some formal thread or technique that might encapsulate the best and worst about the novel and give great detail to my verdict. I could set it up and take my time so that it is ready for display, to be read and admired by hundreds, or at least to persuade a few to pick it up and give it a go. The problem with this route is that I might copy another reviewer's musings on the characters or the landscape, or even plagiarize the expressions the other reviewers use (how does one avoid doing that anyway?). Or maybe the effect I am looking for is more of a personal satisfaction that I can write about such a erudite work, such a monstrosity of prose and intellect and philosophical meanderings and moral surface-skimming, and the wonder if and fear that I cannot do the book justice, to be some stupid formalistic and vapid write-up that really catches some of the finer set pieces but misses the resonance of the novel’s sign wave. So I’ll just try, and only for myself, and only with a half-effort. It’s a difficult book for my first review after all.
Hopscotch is the story of a purposefully displaced intellectual. Horacio Oliveira, who spends the majority of his time seeking out answers to our moral questions through pure intellectual exercise. The novel is split into two main books. In the first book, we find Oliveira in Paris, essentially jobless, a bohemian who surrounds himself with somewhat like-minded bohemians, forming what they refer to as “The Club”. Their aim is to get lost in endless streams of consciousness, so long as they lack heaviness or too much attachment to the “real world.” Amidst a constant backdrop of 1950’s jazz music and enshrouded in a haze of cigarette smoke, the diverse group of seekers—among them a painter, a writer, and a couple of philosophers—find themselves in a pleasurable routine of academic parley, moving from the significance of ancient Chinese torture rituals to the formal and/or content constraints of literature throughout time, to the moral lassitude that seems to beset several of the more abstract-minded characters. Among this group there is one beloved member who does not quite fit in, Lucia. The hostess of the Club’s meetings (to the ire of her crazy old upstairs neighbor) and Oliveira’s lover, she plays a central role in the group’s proceedings but is unable to participate much of the time due to her severe lack of knowledge of much of the work the group references in its discussions. She is the victim of much high-browed snubbing in the form of sighs and condescending explanations from the other members, and as a result she has a much better relationship with each of the characters individually then with them as a unified force. For all her failings as an intellectual, she is clearly the most concrete, grounded and filled with common sense of anyone in the group. She also has a son named Rocamadour.
Much of the first book involves in great detail the discussions of the group—the jazz records flip from one to the next, the philosophy and smoke and calls for mate and rum and other alcohol on top of the music. Also described in great detail is the passionate and somewhat sordid relationship between Oliveira and Lucia, whom Oliveira refers to as La Maga. Both originally came from South America (Oliveira from Argentina and La Maga from Uruguay), but they ended up in Paris for different reasons. Him out of some Bohemian drive to dissect the universe and society. Her because it is simply where she washed up and decided to stay. This dichotomy of intellectual quest and materialist existence is a constant theme between the two lovers, yet the raw sexual passion that they share together is seemingly transcendent.
Oliveira eventually moves in with La Maga and their apartment becomes quite crowded with books, records and the like. The situation seems tolerable enough, until La Maga’s young son moves in with them owing to some contingent circumstances with the child’s father. Oliveira is quite displeased with this situation and acts petulant towards La Maga, complaining in an indirect way by pointing out the lack of space and acting nauseated every time the boy cries or needs to be changed. The strain finally comes to a head one night and he threatens to leave the house. They argue for hours until he finally picks up and leaves the apartment. Having no idea where to go or what to do, he wanders the streets of Paris in search of himself, contemplating his feelings (or lack of feelings) towards La Maga. Eventually he finds a piano concert debut in some small out of the way performance hall and decides to see. The scene becomes surreal and the crowd eventually dwindles down until he is the only one left in the audience. He tries his best to cheer up the crestfallen performer by shouting “bravo” and inviting her to go on a walk with him. He seems to be happy, even satisfied emotionally for a short time while walking with the pianist, and he imagines himself in a cozy apartment with she and her husband, drinking wine and having pleasant, human conversation next to the fire. However, the night ends in disaster and humiliation for Oliveira, due to some unfortunate misunderstanding.
Meanwhile, back at the apartment, Oliveira’s rival in the Club, a shady and arrogant man called Ossip Gregorovious, is at La Maga’s apartment consoling her. He is obviously in love with her, but she feels no reciprocal interest towards him. After a long discussion between the two of them, Oliveira suddenly returns to the apartment, soaking wet and miserable, angry and suspicious to find them together. The three of them chat for awhile (again, in dense philosophical quips, intellectual bursts). At some point in the night he sees Rocamadour sleeping in the corner of an adjacent room and brushes his fingers against his head. He realizes the child is dead but doesn’t want to alert La Maga for fear of her overreaction. Soon thereafter, the rest of the group begins showing up at the house and the night carries on per usual, only the news of the child’s death winds its way around everyone in the group, all except La Maga. When she discovers that the child is dead, she is inconsolable.
Later, there is a wake for the small boy which all of the Club members attend except for Oliveira, who feels his presence would not be welcome. When he returns to La Maga’s apartment a few days later, he discovers Ossip is living there and the house has been stripped bare of its possessions—she has taken everything. However, Oliveira discovers a sentimental note addressed to Rocamadour in the drawer of a desk. He knows, however, it is addressed to him. This signals the end of his dealings with the Club. He wanders around the streets once more and finds a familiar vagrant lady with whom he shares a bottle of wine and talks to for some time. Eventually they both get drunk and she performs a sex act on him. However, the police show up as this is taking place and haul him off in the patrol wagon. This is the end of book one.
The second book sees Oliveira returned to Argentina by ship. We meet two new essential characters, Traveler and Talita, his wife. Both are involved in the circus, though Talita is trained as a pharmacist. Oliveira and Traveler were close friends before his departure to Paris and so they are both somewhat happy to see each other, though slightly resentful in their own way because of their current situation. Oliveira ends up moving into an apartment directly across from the couple and eventually disrupts their lives. Oliveira ends up working first as a traveling salesman of fabric, then working in the circus with Traveler, and ultimately finding a position in an mental institution which the pair take stewardship of as a business venture after their stint in the circus comes to a close. The latter part of the novel chronicles the adventures and reconciliation of the three characters, and ultimately of Oliveira’s mental breakdown as he begins to have hallucinations of La Maga (who has disappeared from the novel after book one) and yearnings for things from his life in Paris. (Wow, that synopsis was a bit lengthy!)
In addition to the two main books, there are also about one hundred short chapters at the end of the novel, mostly fragments—poems, found poetry, marginalia, notes from the fictitious author Morelli, newspaper clippings, etc. Thus, the novel can be read in two ways. One way is to read straight through Chapter 1-Chapter 56 without going to any of the random passages in the back. The other way to read it—and which I believe makes the title of the novel an appropriate one—is to follow the prescribed chapter order given by the author. In this way, the reader finds himself bouncing back and forth, physically flipping through the pages and finding the given chapter, and moving from linear narrative to fragment of life, to intellectual crumb or fixation, or even to intriguing-yet-derivative plot points.
I should first say unequivocally that, on the whole, I really loved this novel. I was astounded by the beauty of the language, by the erudition of the author, by the novelty of some of the sentence and story forms. Every word, every sentence, character expression, description, basically every passage in the novel, felt newly minted, not like anything that was written before anywhere else. I realize that using different words throughout the whole novel—the lexicon here is ENORMOUS and I would recommend both a dictionary and some kind of cultural guidebook (internet) to anyone serious about following all the references; it surpasses “Ulysses” or works by Huxley in its references to history, literature, music, pop culture, mythology, etc—but it does make for a unique reading experience. It’s as if the characters are constantly having breakthroughs, seeing things from a different vantage, even if the vantage has been taken by someone else before.
“Hopscotch” is a book about a lot of things, but essentially about ways of being towards the world, towards fellow humans, towards oneself, towards art and literature, towards society. Oliveira’s character is the embodiment of overt intellectualism, a mind that is abstract and flexible but which cannot really grasp human feeling or common sense. He can quote any poet but knows not about what poets write. He finds his opposite in La Maga, a somewhat off-center woman with more than enough common sense and emotion, but with a whimsical notion of life, one that eschews intellectualism even as she herself tries to become more familiar with the academic names and ideas bandied about in the Club. Even though their relationship is lustful and enjoyable, he is adamant that they not be in love, that he be allowed to be “free”. But free from what? It is not exactly commitment that Oliveira is afraid of, but of lowering his guard and becoming someone who is not in pursuit of that highest intellectual ideal. Ironically, he seems to have no understanding of what he is searching for as he grabs at thousands of diffuse or interconnected straws. He finds no real peer within the Club, even though they are the most elite group of thinkers (speaking about potential) one can imagine. When he’s challenged with one argument, he turns it on its head and calls for the opposite. He claims to be searching even for a moral key by being amoral. He seems to want himself to be a representative of an ideal or argument.
His quest leads him to a sort of desperation, on the verge of which he discovers himself capable of human emotions, but he appears to be afraid of these emotions. For example, when he is wandering the streets thinking of La Maga he becomes frustrated at some of the sentimental misgivings he has about leaving, about their past, about her situation. Later, when he accompanies the pianist in the rain and is fantasizing about drinking wine by the fire, he seems sad and upset that his humble and human desire cannot come to pass. But then a slap on the face from the scandalized pianist sends him right back into his standard stoic mood. He rebukes himself for these feelings and says “I must be getting soft in my old age.”
Later in the novel, when Oliveira is reunited with his old friend Traveler, he doesn’t display affection but recognizes a brotherly connection between them. Traveler has everything the Oliveira cannot have—a wife, love, common sense about responsibilities and obligations. At this point in his saga, Oliveira seems to have reached the end of his rope, and because he has somewhere deep down a desire which he can’t justify by his abstractions, he begins to hallucinate about reality, to see Talita as he wants her to be, that is, as La Maga. Because he has no way to resolve this despair intellectually, he goes a bit crazy.
I have to admit that much of this novel was probably lost on me, though I tried by best to concentrate and commit. There was just an overwhelming amount of references, of linguistic gymnastics, of modernist and surrealist and beat style that, although constantly entertaining and beautiful in their own way, made it difficult to focus on the “plot” or even on the theme of the novel. If I had to venture some a guess as to the conflicts in the novel, I would say that there is intellectualism versus material and emotional connection to the world; modern man’s attempt to achieve a feeling of significance amongst an ocean of cultural, historic, and scientific achievements; an individual’s ability to reconcile his ideals with the concrete reality of life; a compelling and painful need to examine the world metaphysically, to arrive at an answer through questions which might be the wrong ones, but which we keep asking because we don’t know what the right ones are.
There are several formal and stylistic elements that pervade the novel. One that has been mentioned a lot and which informs the writing of a lot of artists of this generation is that of jazz. From Allen Ginsberg to Jackson Pollock, artists drew inspiration from the improvised nature of jazz; from the stream of consciousness that pours out seemingly chaotically but which eventually has some kind of meaning, meaning that can be determined if one pays attention. “Hopscotch” is peppered heavily with jazz, with leaps from one character’s mind to another, with segues from one line of discussion or thought to another. And the beauty of Cortazar’s writing is that it is all done effortlessly, as if that’s how the composition were intended to be played exactly. It is inspiring to read a novel that feels so intellectual yet so expressive. The lines ooze poetry and excitement, perhaps naïveté, but never apathy. It isn’t an apathetic generation or group, but perhaps a cynical one, that chooses to spend it’s evenings getting winedrunk and listening to jazz, discussing things they know they’ll never resolve but discussing the same. It is a kind of mental vigor on display, if that means “action” is deferred or not attempted at all. But it is not a wasted group of minds, no matter how devastating the consequences of their actions might be. These are not Gatsby’s West Eggers—they are bohemians with ONLY mental excursion at their disposal and they put it to full use.
Among the other stylistic effects present is one that occurs in other Latin American writers of this period, although it’s more of a genre: magical realism, a way of writing without complete adherence to physical or biological laws. It is on display here as characters can make amazing leaps of reality without explanation. Unlike realist novels, there is no need to give every detail about HOW something occurred; that’s not so important. For example, the surreal fact of the disappearing crowd in the performance hall in book one, though outlandish and a bit magical, is less important than its effect on Oliveira’s humanity. Also, the latter part of book two has some odd scenes which are not explained—how does the couple come to acquire the mental institution? Why does a pharmacist work in the circus? It is surreal. How does Oliveira’s mental breakdown precipitate exactly? We are not given these details. In that regard, the real “magic” here is not in having characters defy gravity, but in omitting the explanation of some incredible facts and moving from one action to the next, from one event to the next as if we are jumping on lily pads. In that respect, Cortazar’s narration is less like Dostoevsky and more like Kafka—things just “are” that way.
In sum, the novel is brilliant; a collage of short stories fused into a cohesive narrative which is carried by the sheer elegant brilliance of its language if by nothing else. The plot is not the heart of the artichoke. Rather, it is the feel of the mate on the back of our Oliveira’s throat, the satisfaction and searching and captivating set pieces, which make this one of the best books I’ve yet read.
