Discussion - Week Two - Hopscotch - Chapter 18 - 27

[Jim]

This discussion covers Chapter 18 – 27, pp. 72 – 138


And so we continue on with our characters' adventures in Paris…

Horacio feels the walls moving in, so he tells LaMaga he’s going out for a walk. After a premiere piano concert, Horacio walks the pianist back to her place. Meanwhile, Gregorovious tries in vain to get closer to LaMaga. Rocamadour's fever is a bit worrisome...

To avoid spoilers, please restrict your comments to Chapters 18 – 27, and the earlier chapters.

[Jim]

I don't know if anyone else is sensing this, but it feels like there are some big gaps between these chapters now. Is it my imagination? Am I sensing the gaps because I know filler is coming later?

[Matthew]

I find it quite an experience reading this book a second time, having attempted to read it a first time with the enhanced edition, and looking at the idea of dualities.

I notice those gaps Jim, but it wasn't that long ago that I read, or attempted to read, those gaps. Reading through now, its a different experience altogther. My reading of the book, whether or not I like it, is as entirely based on prior expereince with HS. It doesn't matter that I'm reading the same version you are, we all come to a text a little differently them the next person. We all bring our own things to a text.

[aPriL does feral sometimes]

The incident about Berthe Trepat seems to be huge for Oliveira. Is it because he actually experienced empathy with her reality, as he perceived it, and got nothing but negative affirmation that reality is too easily misinterpreted by subjectivity for real connecting on the same plain? Or is it because he was humiliated by her ultimate conclusions that she believed he desired sex from her and was not acting with altruism or sympathy?

I have been looking up the various artists and philosophers Oliveira discusses, and he seems to sympathize with those that feel perceived reality is not real for a variety of reasons, mostly because exterior events can be measured only by personal and individual interior mental functions which are completely unreliable. These admired philosophers all seem to feel inaccuracies of Time perception is proof of human failure to experience reality, at some point.

I am assuming, since the author noted at the beginning he is hopscotching around, playing with the forms and function of writing, and I do not feel he is an admirer of the characters that he is portraying since Cortazar worked FAR harder writing this book than his characters seem to work in the book and they are remarkable for using ideas in a manner similar to drug addiction, that Cortazar is actually satirizing these philosophies and not really analyzing them except to prove his point on the sterility and lack of utility of these ideas.

Taking off my reader hat, so I can be more 'real', I feel enormous distaste for these characters. They are using philosophical argumentation to judge individuals and avoid interacting or truly responding to real need, especially their own. They feel like cowards and wastrels to me. Plus, I feel sorry for La Maga, who is looking for substance and an intellectual clarity, and like most young people of a certain age, is confusing philosophy and intelligence with actual ability and problem solving for life's mysteries and hassles.

I realize I barely understand this book. Does anyone have enlightenment for me?

[Jimmy]

April, don't doubt yourself... you totally understand this book! Your point about Cortazar making fun of these characters rings true with me also. I don't think it's a mean kind of making fun though. I think Cortazar loves/hates these characters. It is more of a showing of a kind of folly/trap.

Your observation about the artists Oliveira admires having a perceived reality/reality rift is interesting. I think it may go beyond Oliveira to the whole club, though. The thing is, I think Cortazar admires these artists too. But in this case, he may be using them to show the complete out-of-touchness of his characters. They've almost overdosed on these artists/philosophies, rather than using them in any productive or inspirational way. They use them as a crutch/excuse. I don't think Cortazar himself enjoys these writers/artists in the same way as the Club does. I am only speaking from conjecture of course.

Matthew: I am also reading it a second time and noticing things I've never noticed before. The book seems really different this time around. I don't re-read often, so it's quite a strange experience for me.

Berthe Trepat: I'm not sure what to think of this chapter. I really enjoy reading it, but don't really know how it fits into anything else. Maybe it has something to do with this quote, which came in the chapter before: "But people like him and so many others (or those who reject themselves but know themselves close up) got into the worst paradox, the one of reaching the border of otherness perhaps and not being able to cross over."

He goes on:

"That true otherness made up of delicate contacts ... the outstretched hand hatd to find response in another hand stretched out from the beyond, from the other part."

The use of "the other part" seems significant, since the book is divided into parts... and the first part is called "From The Other Side".

Chapter 22, with the old man and the traffic accident is highly reminiscent of the first chapter of The Man without Qualities. I'm almost certain it is a supposed to be a homage to that chapter/book, since I know Julio loves that book.

The beginning of Chapter 21 "the statue of Janus is a useless waste, the truth is that after forty years of age we have our real face on the back of our heads..." that whole paragraph reminded me of Rilke's 8th elegy, here is the beginning of that:

With all its eyes the natural world looks out
into the Open. Only our eyes are turned
backward, and surround plant, animal, child
like traps, as they emerge into their freedom.
We know what is really out there only from
the animal's gaze; for we take the very young
child and force it around, so that it sees
objects--not the Open, which is so
deep in animals' faces. Free from death,
We, only, can see death; the free animal
has its decline in back of it, forever,
and God in front, and when it moves, it moves
already in eternity, like a fountain.

I'm not sure if that was intentional on Julio's part. But it is interesting that Rilke also contrasts human's ability to think with the more natural animal ability/tendency to act/feel/intuit mysteries.

[Lily]

Jimmy wrote: "Matthew: I am also reading it a second time and noticing things I've never noticed before. The book seems really different this time around. I don't re-read often, so it's quite a strange experience for me...."

Powerful post! Thx, Jimmy.

As to rereading -- it was Eman (Everyman) and Laurele of the Western Classics board here on Goodreads who got me started rereading back in the days when we all used Barnes and Noble discussion groups. (Laurele led Epics.) For good books (the really good ones) it has been a wonderful teaching to me. Glad to find rereading rewarding yourself. (Another contributor here on Goodreads has been teaching me rereading another way -- read passages or chapters several times even as one reads or after a first read-through. Again, the books have to be "worth it.") Then, I have another friend who speed reads everything.... she gets through a lot more books than I can!

[Jimmy]

maybe unrelated, but I just read this article: The Problem with Men Explaining Things that reminded me of The Club and their condescending attitude towards La Maga.

[Jimmy]

Lily wrote: "Jimmy wrote: "Matthew: I am also reading it a second time and noticing things I've never noticed before. The book seems really different this time around. I don't re-read often, so it's quite a str..."

Hmmm... interesting. I never thought of re-reading strategies, but you maybe on to something. Here's what I think would be very productive... instead of re-reading chapters several times, read the whole book once... then go back and read the first 50 pages. So far in Hopscotch, I feel like the first few chapters are the ones where I didn't catch a lot of the interesting things that I would have caught later on (after I learned to read the book, so to speak, and knew what to look for).

[Lily]

Jimmy wrote: "..what I think would be very productive... instead of re-reading chapters several times, read the whole book once......"

Sidebar comment to Hopscotch, so putting in (view spoiler)[

Yes, I find seldom find it productive to reread chapters as I go -- except perhaps some of Henry James's later stuff like Wings of the Dove which, with all its lost or hazy antecedents, I found d.. well impossible a first read through.

Anna Karenina has become one of the few books I can listen to again every two or three years or so. I think I am on the third time right now. Laurele is the one who "gave" me that strategy.

On B&N, one of the longest running threads was on re-reading. The attitudes and strategies of people are fascinating. We are faced with so much information and have been taught about speed-reading to the extent that rereading prima facie seems anathema.

One series that is high on my TBR to reread is Durrell's Alexandria Quartet which I last read in its entirety when I was 21. Hopscotch, out of the same era, is heightening that desire. But, as always, so much else gets in the way.

(hide spoiler)]

[Lily]

Jimmy wrote: "Chapter 22, with the old man and the traffic accident is highly reminiscent of the first chapter of The Man without Qualities. I'm almost certain it is a supposed to be a homage to that chapter/book, since I know Julio loves that book...."

For more of Jimmy's thoughts on TMWQ, see his review:

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52...

It is long -- I haven't time this morning to get through it, but am tagging for those may be interested in further comparison of Cortázar to Musil.

[Matthew]

Lily wrote:

'Also, O. says "To meet you and to hear the story about the Negro is one and the same thing." p.82. Stories (necessarily) told again and again, in their unity and their variation?'

Glad you brought this up Lily. I know you brought it up last week but this still seemed to stick out to me. Cortazar makes it a point to show the rape as La Maja's narrative. And that she perhaps uses this narrative to process the rape. But perhaps she also manipulates the narrative herself? Or part of the reason why O says what he says.

Gregorovius' resaons for being in the Serpent Club tonight are, ostensibly, also for narrative reasons, to hear stories of his home country. And I don't doubt he does, but it is tied to his attraction (sexual or otherwise) to La Maga, so even that has its own falseness behind it. Falseness doesn't seem like the correct word...maybe subtext?

Concerning re-reading, I find that I do sometimes re-read chapters in books that for whatever reason I can't make sense of, or if I've taken some time away from that book and I liked that chapter, or if I want to make some kind of comment on it later. I did this often with my reading of Gravity's Rainbow.

Also, I will re-read chapters if they make good short stories or if I just enjoy them.

April, I'm also in some agreement with you about these characters. I don't necessarily think they are sympathetic. They drink excessively, use illicit drugs, and worse. But their philosophizing and arguing over order/disorder, realism/abstraction is as much about doing the same things the drugs do....keeping the pain away and escaping reality. And it seems some of these characters are definitely in pain, and certainly some don't want to accept reality.

I liked the Berthe Trapat chapter because I felt like Cortazar was making fun of musicians as much as he was other writers and thinkers, in particular the avant- garde of the time.

However, Jimmy may be on to something about that quote from the prior chapter: "But people like him and so many others (or those who reject themselves but know themselves close up) got into the worst paradox, the one of reaching the border of otherness perhaps and not being able to cross over."

O. wants desperately to experience things, although never quite seems to let himself go. Perhaps the joke is maybe Trapat can't either though, and perhaps for entirely other reasons.

[aPriL does feral sometimes]

I think Trepat was doing musically what The Serpent Club was doing verbally in their meetings. Her concert was nothing but sampling various measures and chords from established famous works by master composers, with long silences between that emphasized her pretentiousness rather than respect for the music. She felt she was making art, but she was only restating bits of great music in a boring and inaccessible manner. In this same way, the Club members discussed philosophy and art. She, also was blind to her lack of creativity. She believed that by stringing bits of famous music together she was synthesizing, but all she was doing was an unimaginative copying, apparently, with nothing new to say, and not a synthesis at all. O had sympathy because he felt he understood her intent as well as her failure, perhaps, her failure being his, as well.

Parroting Brahms is not the same as being Brahms. Quoting creative ideas is not creativity or intelligence.

Jazz is, at its heart, synthesizing and creative, by the way. I love jazz. It successfully meshes, mixes, jumps around and creates something new to say from old musical phrasing. I think jazz represents what all of these characters are reaching for. The trouble is instead of synthesizing the way jazz does, they are aping and copying like Trepat.

[Lily]

Matthew wrote: "Lily wrote: 'Also, O. says "To meet you and to hear the story about the Negro is one and the same thing." p.82. Stories (necessarily) told again and again, in their unity and their variation?'

Glad you brought this up Lily. I know you brought it up last week but this still seemed to stick out to me. Cortazar makes it a point to show the rape as La Maja's narrative. And that she perhaps uses this narrative to process the rape. But perhaps she also manipulates the narrative herself? Or part of the reason why O says what he says. "

First -- sorry to be missing from the discussion here. I had some other reading that had to be gotten out of the way while I had access to the material.

Anyway, Matthew, I'll first say I agree with you in sensing manipulation as well as catharsis on La Maja's part. I will say, however, that Oliveira finds it almost impossible to just listen and not get gobsplotched by his own insecurities and accusations. (Which is certainly not unique to O.)

I will also point out again the first sentence in the paragraph you excerpted. It was really that one, the discussion and juxtaposition of large, community atrocities, that suggested to me the need for painful stories to be told and retold. (And why I conjecture Cortázar concatenated the two chapters.) As you are probably well aware, much of the Jewish community considers the Holocaust to have become stories the world must not be allowed to forget. Nor, are those horrors the only genocides and atrocities for which the storytelling needs to continue.

Akin and Tom Smith probably are the most reprehensible current public examples of why stories like those of LaMaja or Tamar (Genesis 38) or... must be told and re-told. These are not new stories, even while they are always new.

[Lily]

April the Cheshire Meow wrote: "...Quoting creative ideas is not creativity or intelligence...."

I remember a professor in college asking me if I considered that Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy was a creative work.

Fifty years later, how to look back upon a life? What was creative? (birthing?)

[Lily]

Matthew wrote: "O. wants desperately to experience things, although never quite seems to let himself go. Perhaps the joke is maybe Trapát can't either though, and perhaps for entirely other reasons..."

Somehow, this chapter with Trapát reminds me of Calvino's Difficult Loves. It has been so long ago since I read DL that I am not certain whether it is more that I recently recalled the book in another context, or that the raw, lost Dostoevsky-like intersections of lives are analogous.