SOURCE: "In the Name of the Author: Reading Around Julio Cortázar's Rayuela," in Reclaiming the Author: Figures and Fictions from Spanish America, Duke University Press, 1992, pp. 26-45.

In the following excerpt, Kerr explores the problem of authorship in Hopscotch, focusing on the relationship between Cortázar and the fictional author Morelli.

By virtue of the dramatic and apparently revolutionary turn it gives to Spanish American fiction, Julio Cortázar's Rayuela [Hopscotch] (1963) represents a critical moment in the development of contemporary Spanish American literature. Though one might now question whether this text is in fact as subversive as it seemed to earlier readers, it would be difficult to dispute Rayuela's place within the modern Spanish American canon, or to challenge Cortázar status within Spanish American literary culture. I have chosen to begin with this title precisely because in Rayuela—a text noted for its radical questioning...