Hopscotch by Julio Cortázar

Tragically bohemian Latinos in Paris

Argentinian writer Julio Cortázar was born in Belgium during World War I. He grew up in Buenos Aires and emigrated to France in his late thirties. Cortázar is a highly esteemed author in Latin America, where he is considered one of the groundbreaking modernists who spearheaded the Latin American literary “Boom” of the 1960s and ‘70s. His novel Hopscotch (original Spanish title: Rayuela) was published in 1963.

Hopscotch concerns an Argentinian expatriate named Horacio Oliveira who lives in Paris. He is involved with a woman called La Maga (real name Lucia) who is from Uruguay and has an infant son. The two South Americans circulate amongst an international group of friends, self-appointed intellectuals who live a bohemian lifestyle. Calling themselves, “the Club,” they spend their days and nights sipping coffee and maté (a sort of South American tea), listening to jazz records, and arguing about literature and philosophy. Other than one member who calls himself a painter, none of them seem to have jobs, and its unclear how they survive. All of the club members display a condescending attitude toward La Maga, who is not as well-read as the men in the group. She seems to have a genuine love for Horacio, who merely deigns to put up with her.

At first, it’s possible for the reader to become invested in the relationship between Horacio and La Maga, but at the halfway point the novel takes a turn into another direction that just feels silly, pointless, and a colossal waste of time. La Maga, unfortunately, is the only sympathetic character in the book. The rest of this social set is composed of smug, pretentious blowhards. If your circle of friends talked like the way these guys talk, you’d want to punch them all in the face. They take turns trying to prove they’re smarter than each other by out-name-dropping authors, musicians, philosophers and filmmakers that they think are cool. It doesn’t take long to realize that Cortázar himself is the pretentious blowhard who wants you to think his cultural choices are cool. When the writers and thinkers in question aren’t arcane enough to satisfy his snobbery, he even creates a fictional intellectual named Morelli whom he quotes at length to no purpose.

Hopscotch is renowned for its innovative narrative structure. In a brief intro, Cortázar explains that the novel can be read in two ways. First, one can read it as a linear novel from chapters 1 through 56. Alternately, one can follow a maze-like path in which chapters 57 through 155 are haphazardly distributed between the primary narrative chapters. The reader is directed from chapter to chapter in a manner reminiscent of the Choose Your Own Adventure Books, paging back and forth from one passage to the next, or in the case of the ebook, just clicking the links. Being the completist I am, I chose the longer, more circuitous route. Regrettably, chapters 57 through 155 are mostly unnecessary to the narrative (even Cortázar calls them “expendable”) and consist merely of “deep thoughts,” epigraphs, tangential digressions, and failed experiments.

If your definition of great literature is “anything goes,” then you’ll probably think Hopscotch is a cutting-edge masterpiece. I, however, don’t think it deserves that much credit. Many of the writers that Cortázar mentions in Hopscotch, such as Raymond Queneau and Witold Gombrowicz, were far more successful than he at using experimental language and structure to enhance a narrative, create an effect, or actually say something, rather than merely indulging in weird-for-weird’s-sake showiness. Cortázar seems to think that he can just write whatever pops into his head, and you’ll eat it up because he’s a highbrow man of letters. If the book were shorter, it might be easier to give him credit for some cleverly written passages, but Hopscotch is so overdone it feels like an ordeal, like being trapped at one of the Club’s maté parties.