Its peculiar nature, in essence a story of love and loss, has earned Hopscotch a reputation as one of the most innovative works to come out of any place, any time.Īlong with Gabriel García Márquez, Carlos Fuentes and Mario Vargas Llosa, Cortázar was a prominent figure in the Latin American boom of the '60s and '70s. It's an open-ended story made up of 155 episodic chapters, and in it, Cortázar invites the reader to participate in a game of sorts, where time is a blur and entire sections of the book are 'expendable' - the reader being exhorted to skip chapters and reread others. He moved to Paris, finding work as an interpreter and translator - and it was in Paris that he hit his stride, publishing his first novel, The Winners, in 1960.īut Cortázar's second novel, Hopscotch, is his masterpiece. In 1947, he published his first story, 'Casa tomada' ('House Taken Over'), in a magazine edited by Jorge Luis Borges. There, he was educated and began taking steps toward what would become a career in literature. Music Reviews Miguel Zenon And Laurent Coq Play 'Hopscotch'īorn in Belgium in 1914, Cortázar settled with his family in Argentina after World War I. Through the years, his distinctive prose style has spawned scores of copycats. Cortázar remains one of the most revered writers of the past several decades, and also - naturally - among the most emulated. Although people pay less attention to his poetry, it too was exceptional, imbued with his great love for music, history and art. This week marks 100 years since the birth of Julio Cortázar, the Argentine novelist and short story writer. Adorno, after the German sociologist and philosopher.) (Or that he'd named the cat on the cover Theodor W. I didn't know I was about to be introduced to an author so intelligent and inventive, so able to draw me in with his words. I thumbed through the little book some and paid for it - cost me about a dollar at the used book shop. Its eyes were dead set on the playful man with the camera and the mouth and the teeth and bushy eyebrow. There was the cat, too, posted on the windowsill.

After that, of course, his pronounced unibrow - thick and equally unbecoming. Next, his teeth not the best set I'd ever seen.

An informal monument to Julio Cortázar on the streets of Buenos Aires.įirst thing I noticed on the cover was his mouth, which was half open, midlaugh.

Hopscotch by julio cortázar