NP but Cortazar's inanimate novel

[Mark Kohut]

Remember* V* and inanimate things?

Early in Hopscotch, there is extended riffing on inanimate things.
Their lifelessness, the psychological feelings they cause--quite
indebted to Sartre's *Nausea, *I think, and leading me to think that
TRP might have borrowed a little influence too--although he took the
overdoneness out of it, one might speculate, since one is speculating.

Then, later in Hopscotch, there is a paragraph quoted whole from Robert
Musil,
 his *Young Torless, *about the pervasiveness and feelings inanimate things
cause.

All leading to the generalized observation that such stuff on the inanimate
is all about alienation from the world, a HUGE overt theme in Hopscotch and,
of course in *V and Nausea and Young Torless. * A pervasive theme.

A core meaning of 'existentialism', a major cultural strain of it anyway.

And thinking again of* Nausea *and existentialism, I am reminded of
Gardner's
delicious parody and skewering of that book and existentialism in *Grendel.*
Sartre's fictional existentialism, the whining of a youthful monster.
Gardner parodied
what Pynchon simply deflated IF he had any connection to Sartre's very
popular novel.
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