Hopscotch av Julio Cortázar

"Lev!". Tillsammans. Oliviera tänker vad bra jag kan vissla. Barnet dör, La Maga försvinner. Le Club, trummande på bord, jazz, sprit, Paris tillbaka till Buenos Aires, cirkuskatten, Olivieras vänner, sinnesjukhuset. Sen "From Diverse Sides. Expendable Chapters". Man kan läsa Hopscotch från pärm till pärm, eller läsa halvvägs, eller följa sifferhänvisningarna efter varje avsnitt och hoppa mellan kapitlen, eller hur man vill.

Hopscotch är besvärlig och lång men någonstans i början så skrattade jag och efter det slutade jag vara nervös för att jag inte förstod.

I ett av de Expendable Chapters i slutet av boken handlar det om författaren-läsaren. Den romantiskt lagde författaren vill bli förstådd, den klassiske romanförfattaren vill lära ut något och göra avtryck. Men tänk en tredje möjlighet:

that of making an accomplice of the reader, a traveling companion. Simultaneanize him, provided that the reading will abolish reader's time and substitute author's time. Thus the reader would be able to become a coparticipant and cosufferer of the experience through which the novelist is passing, at the same moment and in the same form.

Att ge läsaren en fasad med dörrar och fönster bakom vilken läsaren får se till att det händer något (coparticipate) eller upptäcka att inget händer (cosuffer).

Man kan läsa en bok utan att fatta allting och det kan till och med vara meningen att man som läsare ska fylla i mellanrummen själv.

Jag älskar Hopscotch. Och jag tror inte att Oliviera hoppar (eftersom jag älskar honom).
__________________
Julio Cortázar
Hopscotch (sp: Rayuela, sv: Hoppa hage). 1966. Random House, 1987: ISBN 0-394-75284-8

-De aquí se oye muy bien -dijo Oliveira-.
-Está bien, viejo -dijo Ovejero-. Usted baje cuando quiera, nosotros nos vamos a desayunar.
-Con medialunas fresquitas -dijo la Cuca-. ¿Vamos a preparar café, Talita?
-No sea idiota -dijo Talita, y en el silencio extraordinario que siguió a su admonición, el encuentro de las miradas de Traveler y Oliveira fue como si dos pájaros chocaran en pleno vuelo y cayeran enredados en la casilla nueve, o por lo menos así lo disfrutaron los interesados.
Rayuela. Boken fram till Expendable chapters. På spanska.

In the case of my books, altering reality is a desire, a hope. But it seems important to point out that my books are not written nor were experienced or conceived under the pretense of changing reality. There are people who write as a contribution to the modification of reality. I know that modifying reality is an infinitely slow and difficult undertaking. My books do not function in that sense. A philosopher develops a philosophical system convinced that it is the truth and will modify reality because he supposes he's right. A sociologist establishes a theory. A politician also pretends to change the world. My case is much more modest. Let's say Oliveira is speaking: let's return to one of the constant themes in Rayuela. I am firmly convinced, each day more profoundly, that we are embarked on the wrong road. That is to say that humanity took the wrong path. I'm speaking, above all, of Western man because I know little about the Orient. We have taken an historically false road that is carrying us directly into a definite catastrophe, annihilation by whatever means--war, air pollution, contamination, fatigue, universal suicide, whatever you please. So in Rayuela, above all, there is that continuous feeling of existing in a world that is not what it should be. Here let me make an important parenthetical statement. There have been critics who have thought Rayuela to be a profoundly pessimistic book in the sense that it only laments the state of affairs. I believe it is a profoundly optimistic book because Oliveira, despite his quarrelsome nature, as we Argentinians say, his fits of anger, his mental mediocrity, his incapacity to reach beyond certain limits, is a man who knocks himself against the wall, the wall of love, of daily life, of philosophical systems, of politics.He hits his head against all that because he is essentially an optimist, because he believes that one day, not for him but for others, that wall will fall and on the other side will be the kibbutz of desire, the millennium, authentic man, the humanity he's dreamt of but which had not been a reality until that moment. Rayuela was written before my political and ideological stand, before my first trip to Cuba. I realized many years later that Oliveira is a little like Lenin, and don't take this as a pretense. It is an analogy in the sense that both are optimists, each in his own way. Lenin would not have fought so if he had not believed in man. One must believe in man. Lenin is profoundly optimistic, the same as Trotsky. Just as Stalin is a pessimist, Lenin and Trotsky are optimists. And Oliveira in his small, mediocre way is also. Because the alternative is to shoot oneself or simply keep on living and accepting all that is good in life. The Western world has many good things. So the general idea in Rayuela is the realization of failure and the hope to triumph. The book proposes no solutions; it limits itself simply to showing the possible ways of knocking down the wall to see what's on the other side.
Intervju med Julio Cortazar från 1983.