Anyone here read Hopscotch by Julio Cortazar? I am intrigued by its form:
"Written in an episodic, snapshot manner, the novel has 155 chapters, the last 99 designated as "expendable." Some of these "expendable" chapters fill in gaps that occur in the main storyline, while others add information about the characters or record the aesthetic or literary speculations of a writer named Morelli who makes a brief appearance in the narrative. Some of the "expendable" chapters at first seem like random musings, but upon closer inspection solve questions that arise during the reading of the first two parts of the book.
An author's note suggests that the book would best be read in one of two possible ways, either progressively from chapters 1 to 56 or by "hopscotching" through the entire set of 155 chapters according to a "Table of Instructions" designated by the author. Cort?zar also leaves the reader the option of choosing a unique path through the narrative."
Have you read
Hopscotch by now?
I'm in the middle of it right now. It's one hell of a book I must say - just as crazy as your post made it seem. Even though it's a bit more linear than I thought at first: As recommended by the author, you read the first 56 chapters in the same order as you would read any other book. But between most chapters, you jump between one or more expendable chapters, which - more or less - enlighten your reading process. With each chapter, especially with the expendable ones, you never know what you're going to get: sometimes lyrics from a jazz song, sometimes a chapter from Morelli (a fictional philosopher), sometimes an extract from The Guardian, sometimes a director's cut-style additional chapter from the original plotline, sometimes a dialogue, sometimes an interior dialogue where every line belongs to a different sentence. The "main story" (in lack of a better world) centers around Horacio Oliveira, an Argentinian boheme living in 1950s Paris, and how he met, loved and lost "La Maga". Hopscotch is not a conventional love story, even though the relationship between Horacio and la Maga is gripping and at times heartbreaking. The book is not exactly a page turner either, but it's a redeeming read when you take your time. I like the book's crazy experiments with form, some more than others though. But that's ok, I guess Cortazar didn't want to write a novel like thousands before him and that's what makes it interesting.
I had to take a break in the middle of Hopscotch though, for the sake of a more straightforward book. I was sceptical about it when it came out a few years ago, but I decided to give
Submission by Michel Houellebecq a try. All in all, it's an important book and I'm glad Houellebecq had the balls to publish a novel like that. I feel like the left throughout the West hasn't found a way to address and understand Islamism yet, even though it's a pressing issue for everybody and too important to leave it to the right. Houellebecq designs a Dystopian future, where a Muslim party with a charismatic leader wins the French election, because they succeeded in presenting themselves as a liberal alternative to Le Pen's Front National. It's an interesting experiment in thought, which will hopefully spark a debate among the liberal left (probably not). While I didn't mind Submission's politics, I didn't really like its literary qualities. But maybe I was just spoilt by Cortazar.
Has someone else read it? What did you think?