Nate D's Reviews > 62: A Model Kit

Haunting and disconcerting, formally confused and elegant, a novel as a system of correspondences, scattered both spatially and temporally, a vast map or set of maps which perfectly overlay in uncertain fashion, whose ink under weight of tears and dark waves gradually bleeds through into a single compound form, bleeds and coagulates anew into a highly ordered system of ambiguities, a dark constellation that guides the unwary down unfamiliar streets and through empty arcades to eerily circular revelations, profound and fleeting, sensed pre-verbally as ominous contours but gone just before they are elucidated.

And I had lived through too many attacks of those explosions of a power that came out of myself against myself not to know whether some were mere flashes of lightning that gave way to nothingness without leaving more than a frustration (monotonous deja vu's, meaningful associations, but swallowing their own tails), or other time, like the one that had just happened to me, were something astir in territory deep inside, wounding me all over like an iron claw, which, at the same time, was a door slammed in my face. (pg.22)

Cortazar's elliptic masterpiece is a strange concurrence of gothic disquiet, poetic sleepwalking though unreal cities, interupting buffoonery and snail races, tangled sentences, tangled thoughts, tangled interpersonal relationships, things that must be said but which can't extricate themselves from the tip of the tongue. It's hard work: the overture is over 30 pages of revolving recollection built of highly significant but fragmented details which will be near-entirely lost on the new reader in favor of a few "mediocre phonetic associations". I had to read it twice, too tired to extract the deep-structures at first, then feeling them out but still unsure what all this seeming nonsense was indicating. The solution was not to be found in the following adagio, where, at last, we are given a chance to learn all the characters who existed as flickers in the overture, nor, except partially, in the crescendo that followed. Here, at last, the story began to develop teeth of its own, I at last, 100 pages in, realized that I was completely gripped and glad I had stuck with it through all that I had incorrectly suspected might not be worth the trouble. Then the brilliant, rending scherzo* enacted simultaneously in two and half cities, and finally a sustained burn of a finale that can only lead back to the overture, to the overture which now almost almost assumes some kind of order. And so on.

What I'm left with: intimations of the spectral City the underlies all cities, a deep and sustained sorrow, a fuguer of characters who I had feared were another version of Hopscotch's muddled expat bohemian Club, but who I actually find so much more interesting and affecting, and that dark and leering constellation which ties together the devastating orchestrations of an unkempt but terribly formal universe.

It's absolutely not for everyone. I've struggled somewhat with Cortazar, to the point that I actually wrote a long entry here explaining how we just weren't made for eachother at page 100. Only to found myself captivated by every page that followed. Had the book changed or had I? Had we changed eachother, as people do, insidiously? All told, I'll stick with him, will keep sticking with him, as long as he has anything like this to show me.

note:
Paredros: from a greek root suggesting a group of peers in a legal sense, and also a sort of attendant spirit, both of which definitions are maintained in the French "paredre". This ambiguous actual/mythological chorus seems to suit Cortazar's needs in maintaining a certain vagueness within the circle of protagonist here. Found in this article which is very helpful, but also prone to spoilers, so don't read it until afterwards.

*my understanding of scherzo proves a little off here. Apparently, it's fast (which I knew) but often humorous (which I did not know, and in no way applies to this terrifying stretch of Cortazar's book). My reference point here, was the "Suicide Scherzo" arranged out of Beethoven's 9th in A Clockwork Orange so think more on those lines.