Jazz in Rayuela (Hopscotch)

Music has played an important roll in the development of literature, styles and ideas. After reading Coming through Slaughter and the Great Gatsby, music, especially jazz, has played a much more important role in the literature we read. While reading Rayuela, or Hopscotch, I noticed that almost a whole chapter is dedicated to jazz, and its significance could be very important to help us understand the book. Although it is not incorporated in its form, like Coming through Slaughter, jazz is characterized in this chapter as a way of living, a style, “hablándose con la Maga entre el humo y el jazz" or “el tema era lo bastante vulgar para permitirse libertades que Ronald no le hubiera consentido…”. Also, the way jazz is formed can describe us the Club de la Serpiente, Oliveira s and la Maga s relationship aswell as the form, or structure, of the book and the main characters personality. “Will he find la Maga” Cortazar starts his novel, and continues it with a combination of different, random, improvised, memories he collects while he walks through the streets of Paris looking for her. Is Paris, besides everything he describes it, a song, a melody?