Word: corte
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...exacting standards of Julio Cortázar, a lazy reader is one who expects the author to do all the work. Such a reader assumes that a story will unwind consecutively, rationally, grammatically, before his indolent eyes. The sentences parse, the paragraphs link, the chapters march, good soldiers all, to a dramatically acceptable denouement. So much for the lazy reader. Author Cortázar wants nothing to do with...
Path of Obstacles. Hopscotch is aptly named. Not since Ulysses have so many obstacles strewn the path of understanding. The first 56 chapters are to be read in numerical order. At that point the reader, obeying Cortázar's Table of Instructions, is asked to leapfrog ahead to Chapter 73 and then hopscotch about in all directions on a course that, if followed, means reading 56 chapters twice and one chapter four times-all told, 900 pages...
Along this bewildering route, the author's meaning must usually be guessed at; nobody's going to catch Julio Cortázar making things too clear. "Sometimes I am convinced," muses one character, "that the triangle is another name for stupidity, that eight times eight is madness or a dog." When this character, a Uruguayan woman called La Maga, goes to bed with Horacio Oliveira, an Argentine, they make love in "Gliglish": "Right away she tordled her hurgales, allowing him gently to bring up his orfelunes...
CHARLES B. CORT West Hartford, Conn...
Hispaniola became Spain's first permanent colony in the New World, its key harbor and free port to all the Indies. From the Santo Domingo capital, Ponce de León sailed forth to Florida, Balboa discovered the Pacific, Pizarro invaded Peru, and Cortés conquered Mexico. It was the site of Latin America's first cathedral in 1514, its first university in 1538. Even then it was a land of violence, where men carried the law in their knives, and the captains from Castile thought nothing of shearing an ear from a disobedient Indian or letting...