This is most evident in his consistently deplorable treatment of La Maga, his lover, and of women in general. I’m not typically hostile to antiheroes, but Oliveira is simply despicable in ways that preclude endearment. Horacio Oliveira, the novel’s protagonist, is a self-serving, ultra-intellectual boob so mired in his own theoretical confusion that he fails at every turn to behave like a decent human being. This book’s downfall is its utter lack of characters with whom I can emotionally connect. Cortázar spills much ink obsessing over abstruse existential quandaries, failings of language, and the human preoccupation with our inability to access realms of pure essence/meaning. As a fictionalized work of postmodern philosophy, its only firm conviction is that it has nothing concrete to say. While Hopscotch contains some of the tropes we associate with traditional novels, it’s more concerned with subverting expectations than telling a story. A dedicated enthusiast might undertake dual read-throughs to sample each method, but having finished using the hop-step approach, I’m in no rush to jump back into this enigmatic mess of a novel. This choice is a false and rather insincere one, for only with great difficulty can I imagine a reader willing to stop midway through any book––excepting cases of extreme frustration or boredom––without wanting to experience the whole story. In this novel’s table of instructions, Julio Cortázar states that Hopscotch “consists of many books, but two books above all.” The reader is given a choice: read the book in normal fashion and stop at the end of Chapter 56 (in which case a large portion of the book will remain unread), or jump between chapters in a prescribed order (this method includes all chapters).

Rayuela by julio cortazar