NP. Good Morning Sunshine: gotta tell you Plisters,

[Mark Kohut]

if it isn't semi-obvious, HOPSCOTCH
is a novel of which I am enamored. Where has it been
all my life, when I've had it in mind--and a copy--almost all my adult life?
Not since...

Not since Against the Day have I had to look up so many words;
not since not having to read Proust in French, have I had to google
translate
so much French. The novel assumes you can read th language, there are many
lines, phrases, whole, sometimes long, spoken (or quoted--poetry) sentences.

I have more to post, including a listicle of more ways this novel
is closer to Pynchon's writing than most novels.

One thing to say: One can feel Cortazar pushing himself as hard as he can
here. Like a few others we know. Gravity's Rainbow; The Recognitions, War &
Peace, The Man
Without Qualities.   The strain shows. It is surely repetitious in some
ways, too many variations on themes, maybe, but still, almost always
something unforgettable--if
only you could make sure you remember it in its full meaning. as with GR,
say.

It must be reread---and the author set that up in the two major options for
reading it, an ingenious
move, and thematic as a perfect chord.

This, outside of failing at a different Pynchon, would be one of the best
candidates for the Plist
to fail at a Group Read of.

PS. I personally don't think it is as good as A Hundred Years of Solitude,
say, --that seems so seamlessly rich-- or Pynchon's three richest best or
Proust or some others, not yet anyway,
but it is

So full of stuff to talk about, scenes needing varying readings, allusions,
ideas--ala TRP--philosophy and psychology in conversation--as well as jazz
in conversation-- that it is also the best book for a wiki
that is not Joyce, nor Pynchon nor Infinite Jest in my circumscribed
reading.....
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