And besides, they are subsets of each other (with slight inconsistencies, for example chapter 55 is left out of one version). While it certainly can be, the ‘instructions’ at the beginning specifies only 2 official ways of reading it. I had it in my head that the book could be read in an infinite variety of ways. For example, if you see “> 24”, then proceed to paragraph/sentence # 24 (which is conveniently labelled and bolded).ġ I expected this book to be more inventive than it turned out to be, based mostly on how much hoopla there was around its experimental form. The second should be read by beginning with 1 and then following the sequence indicated at the end of each sentence or paragraph. Consequently, the reader may ignore what follows with a clean conscience.

Start from 1 and go to 12, at the close of which there are three garish little stars which stand for the words The End. The first can be read in a normal fashion. 'Rabassa's One Hundred Years of Solitude improved the original,' according to García Márquez. Julio Cortázar was so pleased with Rabassa's translation of Hopscotch that he recommended the translator to Gabriel García Márquez when García Márquez was looking for someone to translate his novel One Hundred Years of Solitude into English. In 1966, Gregory Rabassa won the first National Book Award to recognize the work of a translator, for his English-language edition of Hopscotch. The book is highly influenced by Henry Miller’s reckless and relentless search for truth in post-decadent Paris and Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki’s modal teachings on Zen Buddhism.Ĭortázar's employment of interior monologue, punning, slang, and his use of different languages is reminiscent of Modernist writers like Joyce, although his main influences were Surrealism and the French New Novel, as well as the 'riffing' aesthetic of jazz and New Wave Cinema. Hopscotch is the dazzling, freewheeling account of Oliveira's astonishing adventures.

Horacio Oliveira is an Argentinian writer who lives in Paris with his mistress, La Maga, surrounded by a loose-knit circle of bohemian friends who call themselves 'the Club.' A child's death and La Maga's disappearance put an end to his life of empty pleasures and intellectual acrobatics, and prompt Oliveira to return to Buenos Aires, where he works by turns as a salesman, a keeper of a circus cat which can truly count, and an attendant in an insane asylum.

62 by Julio Cortázar