Like the author’s earlier Hopscotch, the novel 62: A Model Kit defies conventions of linear structure, time, and narrative, thereby seeking to redefine notions of how literary art might both be conceived and received. The reader is informed in an introductory note by Argentine writer Julio Cortázar (1914–84) that the novel’s title and intention come directly from chapter 62 of Hopscotch, wherein the cryptic Morelli, philosopher and aesthete, reveals his sketches for a new kind of novel in which the false and oversimplified constructions of motivation, psychological rendering, and causality are disregarded in favor of an “impersonal drama” of logical and psychological disjunction. But while Morelli’s ambitious idea “never got beyond a few scattered notes,” his conception of this unsettling new kind of novel is finally realized—by Cortázar himself—in 62.
Despite its genesis in Hopscotch and its shared experimental aim, however, 62: A Model Kit has proved to be a much more difficult, demanding, and in some ways impenetrable novel than its predecessor. Hopscotch, while innovative in its narrative discursions between past and present, between first and third person, and in its invitation to the reader to reconstruct the novel in his or her own way by reading the chapters out of sequence, nevertheless remains a compelling and cohesive experience, the disparate parts held together by thematic motifs that stem from character, from the protagonist’s search not only to reclaim lost love but to reclaim and reunify the disparate parts of himself. But 62: A Model Kit, in seeking an “impersonal drama,” denies the reader such a unifying thematic or psychological schema with which to organize disparity. In other words, and contrary to its title, the novel appears, certainly on a first read, to offer the reader no “model” by which to read it.
62’s characters seem cut from a familiar Cortázarian cloth: they are young, disaffected bohemians, a close circle of intellectuals and malcontents who meet to drink, smoke cigarettes, and discuss matters of philosophical, artistic, and social interest. Yet differentiating them from Cortázar’s prior malcontents is the fact that they remain as elusive at the novel’s end as at the beginning: The reader is denied access to them, to their thoughts and motivations, their hopes and wants, even to what, exactly, they are disaffected about. All the reader knows about them is what is revealed in their conversations and in the narration, but even in this the reader is offered hints rather than insight, offered clues that remain mysterious minus a clear understanding of the mystery to which they refer.
Although the reader is eventually able to distinguish the characters by name and even by relationship—there is Juan, an interpreter and the seeming protagonist of the novel; Tell, Juan’s lover; Helene, an anesthetist whom Juan is in love with; Marrast, a sculptor in love with Tell; Nicole, Marrast’s lover, who is in love with Juan; Austin, a young man befriended by Marrast—this information, rather than forming some larger aggregate understanding of the characters and of the book, merely exists. The characters themselves seem to be in a state of flux, drifting in and out of scene and focus, and thus the information the reader is given becomes of greatest use in trying to discern which characters occupy which scenes. And then there is the character of the “paredros,” a shadowy figure that seems at times to be part of the characters’ collective and individual consciousnesses, ephemeral or perhaps imagined, yet at other times corporeal and real, even entering into dialogue with the characters. But the eerie and transformational nature of the paredros—who is described at one point in the text as “something like the value of the joker in cards”—is not altogether surprising to the reader. To a degree, every character in the novel is a wild card.
Further adding to the discomfort of the book is its shifting narrative, which moves in time and space, from character to character, from first person to third in the span of a simple sentence, sometimes changing meaning on a single word, and the reader thus never feels entirely certain of who is narrating a given scene, where and when the narration takes place, even which characters are present at a given time. There are physical locations throughout, to be sure, but as many as are concrete are also labyrinthine, in perpetual change—indeed, the city where the group meets to hold their conversations, referred to simply as “the city,” seems at once a patchwork of various real-world cities and a dark, lamplit creation all its own. Even in terms of imagery the narrative seems to be leading us toward some measure of certainty, toward some thematic paradigm with which to make sense of the elusive text, due to the repetition of certain startling recurring motifs: mutilated dolls, mirrors, strange basilisks, vampirism, the presence, both real and imagined, of blood. And yet these images, which often appear out of nowhere and which hold promise of providing direction in the shifting maze, refuse to coalesce into a theme, refuse to allow the reader an epiphanic moment.
Thus, Cortázar’s novel amounts to dream logic, to the surreal and uncomfortable juxtaposition of images, faces, voices that change at a moment’s notice and provide cohesion only through the dreamer’s (here, the reader’s) inability to render any overriding order. Of course, Cortázar never announces or even allows this—the shifting or subjective nature of narrative or consciousness—to concretize in terms of theme. To do so would ultimately provide an exit, and Cortázar remains content to allow the reader to remain in the hall of mirrors, staring infinitely into reflection.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Alonso, Carlos J. Julio Cortázar: New Readings. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Garfield, Evelyn Picon. Julio Cortázar. New York: Frederick Unger, 1975.
Peavler, Terry J. Julio Cortázar. Twayne’s World Author Series 816. Boston: Twayne, 1990.
Standish, Peter. Understanding Julio Cortázar. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2001.
Yovanovich, Gordana. Julio Cortázar’s Character Mosaic: Reading the Longer Fiction. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991.
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