Salon.com > Ted Gioia

Playing “Hopscotch” with Julio Cortázar

Sat, 29 Jun 2013 17:30:00 +0000

I ONCE MET A MAN who claimed he always read the last paragraph of any novel before he turned to page one. “I want to make sure it has a good ending,” he explained. “Otherwise why invest the effort?”

Julio Cortázar has left even bolder suggestions for readers of his experimental novel Hopscotch, published 50 years ago today, June 28. He invites them to start the novel at chapter 73 and then proceed through the novel’s 155 sections in a prescribed order — Cortázar gives a list of the alternative sequence in his “Table of Instructions” — leaping back and forth in the book, until they finally finish, having already read 132 through 155, with chapter 131. To make matters more interesting, he asks readers to skip chapter 55 completely (I will admit I cheated and read it anyway), and to read one of the chapters twice.

Ray Bradbury: The man who made sci-fi respectable

Wed, 06 Jun 2012 20:30:00 +0000

Science fiction icon Ray Bradbury, who died Tuesday at age 91, picked out his epitaph long before he passed away. His headstone, which is already in place at Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery, reads “Author of 'Fahrenheit 451.'”

Can I lobby for a bigger headstone and a longer text? Ray Bradbury’s legacy rests on much more than that one book, even a remarkable work such as "Fahrenheit 451." It’s fitting that the week Bradbury leaves us, the New Yorker releases a special issue devoted to science fiction. No one did more than Ray Bradbury to legitimize sci-fi in the eyes of the literary establishment, and pave the way for today’s newfound respectability of genre writing.

His books contained powerful ideas, even when they seemed to deal in the most fanciful topics. In a genre famous for escapist concepts, Bradbury refused to use the escape hatch. His books told us about ourselves, even as they ranged widely over the universe. Can you fit that on the headstone?

Red Norvo

Mon, 12 Apr 1999 13:01:00 +0000

The jazz world should be embarrassed. When a legendary musician
passes away, the tributes and praise of glowing obituaries usually
soften the blow. But with Red Norvo, who left us just one week
after celebrating his 91st birthday, this posthumous chatter rings
more than a little hollow.

It's not Red's fault. Few did more for jazz than mallet instrument
pioneer Red Norvo. Yet one would never guess the scope of his
achievements from reading jazz writers or listening to jazz radio
stations. Long before he died, the jazz world wrote off Mr. Norvo.
Now for a few days, it will pay tribute to someone it spent decades
ignoring.

Only a few early pioneers of jazz remained with us in the 1990s. But
Mr. Norvo was the one everybody forgot. I was always delighted to see
the others receive honorary degrees at Harvard, tribute concerts at
Lincoln Center, awards or grants, or have their names emblazoned in
sidewalk stars. But in the back of my mind, I wondered, "Why not
Red?"