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A Novel with Two Orders

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A Novel with Two Orders

This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.

Julio Cortazar's 1963 novel Hopscotch opens with a Table of Instructions offering the reader two ways through the book: straight through its first 56 chapters in order, or hopscotching through all 155 chapters in a second sequence the author specifies, which loops back through material the first reading skips. The structure was an unusually direct challenge to the idea that a novel has one correct reading order, and it became one of the most discussed formal experiments to come out of the Latin American Boom, imitated and debated by later writers working in nonlinear form.

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Source Julio Cortazar (Wikipedia)
Sources
Encyclopaedia Britannica
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.View the Source
Playing 'Hopscotch' with Julio Cortazar (Salon)
Salon
  • Playing 'Hopscotch' with Julio Cortazar, on the two reading methods
    He invites them to start the novel at chapter 73 and then proceed through the novel's 155 sections in a prescribed order -- Cortazar gives a list of the alternative sequence in his 'Table of Instructions'
  • Playing 'Hopscotch' with Julio Cortazar, on the traditional reading
    For these stick-in-the-muds, he grants permission to read the novel in traditional sequence, from chapters 1 through 56, but he then asks them to ignore the remaining 99 chapters.
View the Source
Julio Cortazar (Wikipedia)
  • Lead section
    Julio Florencio Cortazar (26 August 1914 - 12 February 1984) was an Argentine and naturalised French novelist, short story writer, poet, essayist, and translator.
  • Article On: Julio Cortazar
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