Word: readerly
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...What makes “Hopscotch” worth returning to, more than anything else, is simply the language itself. The words, rich with sensuous description, overflow their narrative bounds; winding sentences, propelled by commas, curl into perfect metaphors. The reader experiences the glow of a cigarette “slowly sketching out the shapes of his insomnia,” a passing moment as “putting down an empty glass on the table,” light as a “dove in the hands of a madman.” (For the sleek rendering...
...curious bit of authorial self-sabotage though, for as he witnessed the paralyzing effects of theory over action, Cortázar grew deeply suspicious of such a passive appreciation of words. In one of his early short stories, a character in a detective novel murders his reader as he sits quietly in a green velvet armchair flipping the pages. In “Hopscotch,” the pleasures of a linear plot are mocked in a substantial third section subtitled “Expendable Chapters,” the literary equivalent of a DVD bonus disc. This segment features...
...structure. “Hopscotch” can be read either linearly, from Chapter 1 through Chapter 155, or it can be tackled in the order suggested by the fanciful “Table of Instructions” provided at the beginning of the book, which sends the reader “hopscotching” from one chapter to another based on the loosest of associations. Such “make your own adventure”-style plotting can come off as familiar—even gimmicky—now that the approach has been co-opted by a subset...
...these men in the park, the town cuts down the trees that provide their shade. Communities take only an interest in their dispersal. Their only place is in the dungeons of gymnasium locker rooms. The face Tully sees may as well be a memory of his own.Gardener baits the reader with a formula that would ordinarily indicate a redemption story: Tully, a fighter who retired when a change in luck robbed him of his wife and his will, finds his taste for the sport revived—if briefly—after sparring with recreational boxer Ernie Munger, only...
...comment made during one of her lectures: “She nodded very strongly, and said, ‘I agree completely with the opposite of what you’re arguing.’” “She was an unbelievably smart close reader with a good amount of whimsy—very hard to replicate the kind of intellectual acumen that went into her quick sayings,” added Sollors, who also teaches in the department of African and African American studies. “She was just a powerhouse.” Johnson...