Gregory Rabassa's Hopscotch: A Captivating Novel

SB: This novel by Argentine author Luis Cortazar is a masterpiece that comes with a Set of Instructions which includes several different ways to read the novel. I highly recommend reading it following Cortazar’s “Hopscotch” pattern of moving through the chapters before reading it “straight through.” Hopscotch offers up worlds of delight in any kaleidoscopic pattern the reader chooses.

United States on Jul 21, 2023

Prakash Dhavale: Very Good ..........

India on Oct 19, 2020

L.Phillips: Love it

United Kingdom on Aug 08, 2019

Veronica Escudero: As described and fast delivered, many thanks!

United Kingdom on May 27, 2019

Walter Balerno: A seminal book that's highly original and super cool but unfortunately not much fun to read. I'm glad I gave it a go but I just didn't enjoy most of it. That may be partly because I don't like too much misery and drudgery in my books but I suspect it's also because really not that much happens. It's a masterclass in writing beautifully about some pretty dull, miserable things. So 5 stars for beautiful writing, 4 stars for originality of form, 2 stars for entertainment.

United Kingdom on Nov 10, 2017

Orange Postman: In the narrative of Cortázar’s Hopscotch, he analyzes the game of hopscotch after the main character, Oliveira, engages with a clocharde named Emmanuéle on the streets of Paris: “One day you learn how to leave Earth and make the pebble climb into Heaven…the worst part of it is that precisely at that moment…no one has learned how to make the pebble climb up into Heaven.”

Cortázar continues this idea about failing to reach Heaven in the game: “Childhood is all over…you’re into novels, into the anguish of the senseless divine trajectory, into the speculation about another Heaven that you have to reach too…And since you have come out of childhood…you forget that in order to get to Heaven you have to have a pebble and a toe.”

The concept of hopscotch is practical, but Julio Cortázar’s book, Hopscotch, is anything but practical—it is profound. Some of the characters in the story understand the idea to play, most do not. Hopscotch is a set of two books, as told by Julio Cortázar in his Table of Instructions in the beginning of the book. Theses books are a tendril of timelines for Oliveira, because Heaven, according to the game and his actions...

United States on Dec 07, 2014

DTAC: It will be a challenge to add anything new about this classic of Spanish literature other than I loved this book. Six months ago I tried reading the book in English in a chronological order and lost interest. Then I noticed some comments about how boring this book was on my Mexican blog on Goodreads. So how can a pivotal book that inspired the Latin American New Wave not work? I had to give it a try in Spanish.

This time I took Señor Cortázar's suggestion to read the book using his "Table of Directions". Believe me it works. The chapters follow a pattern of a Hopscotch Game. You move forward linear, then jump ahead, maybe a little back, some more ahead and then back to the main storyline. This was a brilliant idea and even though the book is over 50 years old, I felt it could have been written today. Perhaps those young Mexicans didn't relate to all the "jazz talk" of the late 50s-60s. Come to think of it, nor did I but the feeling, the mood and the language pulled me in so much that sometimes I just read along for the plain pleasure of reading. It was really that good. The added benefit of the "jumping ahead-back" into these little vignettes, stories, asides, whatever...

Canada on Jul 27, 2014

Daniel Myers: Why hasn't anyone employed the term "Nouveau Roman" to describe this odd, meandering book? I suppose the fault may, in part, lie in the fact that it was originally penned in Spanish and is considered part of the Latin American canon. But Cortazar wrote much of it whilst working for UNESCO in Paris. And there are vast sections of both French and Spanish left untranslated here. - The French posed no problem for me, though the Spanish did. - The reason I stress the "Nouveau Roman" aspect of this crazyquilt work is that you'll not have any idea of why Cortazar writes as he does here unless you have an idea of what those 1950s writers were all about in this literary movement, because, for my literary capital, Cortazar's Hopsctch is the Nouveau Roman work par excellence. But this ends up being rather a backhanded compliment, perhaps.

So, yes, the novel can be read in several different modes of succeeding chapters, but I'm not going to dwell on this aspect here, because I have now read it in all the different sequences, and it really doesn't matter a hair's breadth of difference in the end as to the general import of the novel. I do agree with the reader who says that if you're...

United States on Oct 08, 2009

John Conner: HOPSCOTCH by Julio Cortazar is more of a maze exploration than simply a good read, yet I became entranced with the prose.

Initially I was attracted to the non-linear format of HOPSCOTCH. Cortazar wants us jumping in and out of the plot line in the main "novel" with seemingly off-the-wall interruptions, but they turn out to be connected after all by the "end." And then some of the juxtapositions are less sublime but equally effective, such as in chapter 14 when Oliveira is looking at Wong's series of pictures depicting an execution in China. As gruesome as the descriptions are, skipping next to chapter 114, I couldn't help but to internalize the absurdity of the "civilized" treatment in the San Quentin prison gas chamber.

Anyway, HOPSCOTCH has in fact been a wonderful read but I think this is the kind of book that readers have to give at least fifty pages (even if that happens to be page 210) before the story grabs hold.

United States on Dec 02, 2005