Book 1, From the Other Side: Chapters 73, 1, 2, 116 Summary

Hopscotch is an account of the misadventures of Horacio Oliveira, a discontent Argentinean intellectual in his forties. He wanders 1950s Paris with his mistress, La Maga, and a band of bohemian cohorts, but a series of missteps and personal tragedies send him packing back to Buenos Aires. There, he encounters still greater tests of his sanity in the company of his childhood friend Traveler. Hopscotch is a portrait of a creative soul stymied by an inability to act.

In Chapter 73, Horacio greets us with a question: how can we be cured of the "colorless fire" that seems to engulf the streets of Paris, stripping it of meaning? He is a writer, concerned that the codified rules governing art and literature have rendered the search for truth impossible. In Chapter 1, Horacio searches the Pont...