User Reviews
Rating: really liked it
”The truth is I grew up in a garden, behind lanceolate railings, and in a library of unlimited, English books.” 
Jorge Luis BorgesJorge Luis Borges, possibly one of the greatest readers of all time, lost his eyesight later in life. I believe the most terrible thing to have happen to a reader is to lose their ability to see. Yes, with Audible now making thousands of books available to be read to people, a blind reader has not completely lost the way to their magical escape tunnels to other worlds. Maybe, if I were blind, I could convince myself that I’ve returned to the age of Homer, where an oral tradition is the only means to pass on stories to others, but that will be a difficult transition for me. I am a reader. I process words much differently by reading them than by having them read to me, so I do think that if I did lose my eyesight, I would be, frankly, finished as a reader.
The question would be, which is very much a Borges type question, is who then would I be?
The blind Borges became Homer, a lecturer who travelled the world, sharing brilliant suppositions by pairing bits of knowledge from here and there that were only made possible by his prodigious reading. These wonderful suppositions, new revelations of what makes us tick as thinking human beings, were only made possible because of all the information he had stored in his brain from...books. So when someone says to me, why do I need to know anything when everything is on the internet? I always say, having the information available doesn’t mean that you have the capacity to make the connections to fully comprehend and use that knowledge, or for that matter even know what to google in the first place.
Borges had the internet in his head. I never really know how to review collections of short stories without the reviews becoming ponderously long. I decided to share a few quotes from the stories that I find to be interesting. My notes from reading this book are vast and easily could have led to a dissertation many times longer than the original source material. I desisted.
For those readers who struggle with Borges’s text, don’t worry. I struggled as well. I had to read and reread sections of the story to make sure that I captured more of what Borges meant. I am positive, many times, that I failed to completely comprehend all that he intended for me to glean from his writing. My advice is to forge ahead, keep swimming from island to island of wonderfully written passages. Do not become overly anxious. I do not want you to get a cramp and drown in the Borges Sea.
”From the far end of the corridor, the mirror was watching us; and we discovered, with the inevitability of discoveries made late at night, that mirrors have something grotesque about them. Then Bioy Casares recalled that one of the heresiarchs of Uqbar had stated that mirrors and copulation are abominable, since they both multiply the numbers of man”--Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius. I’d never really thought of mirrors as abominations before. Though mirrors have been associated with sex probably from the moment the inventor of mirrors first hung a shard on the ceiling over his bed (fanciful supposition).
”One of the schools in Tlon has reached the point of denying time. It reasons that the present is undefined, that the future has no other reality than as present hope, that the past is no more than present memory. Another school declares that the whole of time has already happened and that our life is a vague memory or dim reflection, doubless false and fragmented, of an irrevocable process” --Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius. I can remember pondering the concept of time as a child and wondering why we are so obsessed with it when it constantly reminds us of the quick passage of our lives. If we don’t know what time it is or what day it is or what year it is, we can’t possibly be crippled by the knowing our own age. We would be perpetually as young as we think ourselves to be.
”I cannot imagine the universe without the interjection of Edgar Allan Poe“--Pierre Menard, Author of Don Quixote. Poe, so ignored by his own country for most of his life. Thank goodness the Europeans (and one Argentinian European in particular) saw his merit.
”Every man should be capable of all ideas, and I believe that in the future he will be”--Pierre Menard, Author of Don Quixote. Ideas used to travel so slowly. It is almost as if Borges is anticipating the internet. Of course, as I stated earlier in this review, people must still have a wide base of knowledge in their own head to fully appreciate or apply the brilliant ideas of others.
”With relief, with humiliation, with terror, he understood that he also was an illusion, that someone else was dreaming him”--The Circular Ruins. This would explain a lot. Whoever is dreaming me needs to drink less alcohol or shoot less heroin because I could really use a more coherent path forward.
”I deeply lament having lent, irretrievably, the first book he published, to a female acquaintance”--The Work of Herbert Quain. Ahh yes, who hasn’t lent a book to a saucy literary woman or a handsome poetic man with the hopes of words shared easing the assault on their virtue. The problem, of course, is that rarely do lent volumes return to us. The rule, clearly, for readers and especially collectors is to never lend a book that you expect to get back.
”Quain was in the habit of arguing that readers were an already extinct species”--The Work of Herbert Quain. If they were really serious about saving readers as a species, they would have us behind bars in book filled zoos, encouraging us to reproduce with one another.
Library of Babel”I suspect that the human species--the unique human species--is on the road to extinction, while the Library will last on forever: illuminated, solitary, infinite, perfectly immovable, filled with precious volumes, useless, incorruptible, secret”--The Library of Babel. There was a time I would have agreed with Borges. It is a nice thought that our libraries would exist beyond us, but with the current rate of libraries going extinct, especially in the United States, I would have to say that our species, or some devolved illiterate form of it, may outlive our libraries. Of course, when the internet goes black and the electrical grid goes dark, guess who will still have books to read….me! Candlelight was good enough for Honest Abe. It is certainly good enough for me.
”Whosoever would undertake some atrocious enterprise should act as if it were already accomplished, should impose upon himself a future as irrevocable as the past”--The Garden of the Forking Paths. I could have used this advice several times over the course of my business career, when I sold pieces of my soul. To imagine that the act is already done would have eased the moment when the loss is weighed, measured, and excised.
”In all fiction, when a man is faced with alternatives he chooses one at the expense of the others. In the most unfathomable Ts’ui Pen, he chooses--simultaneously--all of them”— The Garden of Forking Paths. I was thinking as I read this how useful it would be to run simulations of several choices that could show me the outcomes, not only of the first decision but the rippling effects of that decision over the next ten years. The interesting thing in watching how people make decisions is that, even if they have the percentages before them of potential success, they will still go with those fabled gut instincts, even though the simulation shows a much lower potential for success. We are a baffling species, naturally distrustful of knowledge.
”What one man does is something done, in some measure, by all men”--The Form of the Sword. The capacity for greatness or horror exists in all of us. To celebrate one is to celebrate all. To condemn one for an act is really, in many ways, condemning us all.
”’The next time I kill you,’ said Scharlach, ‘I promise you the labyrinth made of the single straight line which is invisible and everlasting’”--Death and the Compass. This has got to be one of the most unique death threats I’ve ever heard uttered. If only Clint Eastwood was still making Dirty Harry movies.
”The time for your work has been granted”--The Secret Miracle. We can only hope, right? I hope Borges accomplished most of what he wanted before the final swing of the glittering scythe. I do want to encourage everyone that, if there is something you know you should be doing, you should get to it. If you have been putting off asking the libidinous (hope springs eternal) librarian out on a date, do it. If you are supposed to be painting, writing, or starting your own business, move the time table up. The sand in the hour glass is flowing faster than you think, and there will be times when it inexplicably speeds up. Carpe Diem!
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Rating: really liked it
Reading Borges is always a challenge. When you read his stories, it seems you are reading everyone else's. There is a lot of references in his work, and if you want to truly (kind of) understand it (or begin to), you have to do some research. He ends up being an invaluable teacher.
Labyrinths, mirrors, libraries, dreams, fantasy, religion, philosophy, epistemology. My love for philosophical literature began with this author.
My all-time favorite story is "Las Ruinas Circulares" (
The Circular Ruins); the power of thoughts.
Con alivio, con humillación, con terror, comprendió que él también era una apariencia, que otro estaba soñándolo.
*
With relief, with humiliation, with terror, he realized that he, too, was but appearance, that another man was dreaming him.
A magnificent line to end a story. Being able to read JLB in Spanish is a privilege.
"Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" is another jewel which contains a line I've never forgotten:
…los espejos y la cópula son abominables, porque multiplican el número de los hombres.
*
Mirrors and copulation are abominable, for they multiply the number of mankind.
I also enjoyed "La lotería de Babilonia" (
The Lottery in Babylon), "El jardín de senderos que se bifurcan" (
The Garden of Forking Paths), "Funes el memorioso" (
Funes, His Memory), "La biblioteca de Babel" (
The Library of Babel), and... I should stop here. Honestly, I loved every utterly beautiful and unfathomably deep short story included in this book. In that sense, this is a pointless, too subjective review because I'm absolutely enamored with Borges' writing. Despite the fact he makes me feel plain ignorant, most of the times. Though that's how we learn.
JLB and his blindness—an apt oxymoron. He saw things beyond the ordinary human eye. He created universes, troubled authors, perfectly plausible fake books, never-ending labyrinths and a unique writing style to talk about everything and more.
He is one of those great writers who makes you feel like everything has already been written.
May 05, 14
* Also on my blog.
** Credit: Photo
Rating: really liked it
The author is a master of mixing fantasy and philosophy. He has been credited as a pioneer in magical realism in Latin American literature. In this classic collection, most stories are almost as much essays as they are short stories.
Recurring themes are non-existent and ancient books. Time. Geometry. Gnosticism. Mirrors. Encyclopedias. Chess. Labyrinths. Imaginary worlds. Memory and mnemonics. Infinity in books, libraries and labyrinths. All possible outcomes, like infinite universes in which every act and its result are mirrored by the opposite act and the opposite result. (Or maybe the opposite act and the same result. lol)
Here are a few examples of the 17 stories:
The Library of Babel, perhaps his best-known story combines almost all of the list in the previous paragraph. The library is God or the universe. Every book is mirrored by one with all the opposite conclusions.
Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius is a story that gives us imaginary countries and worlds that get into encyclopedias and take on a life of their own. (Like imaginary islands) “One of the schools of Tlon has reached the point of denying time. It reasons that the present is undefined, that the future has no other reality than as present hope, that the past is no more than present memory.” (This story calls to mind the fake stories that keep resurfacing and periodically go viral on the internet. This week for example in Feb. 2019, fact checking sites are once again refuting claims that 98 million Americans got cancer from the polio vaccine.)
In The Garden of Forking Paths, a Chinese spy for the Germans (against the British) can only pass on his secret information by killing someone. Meanwhile we hear speculation on the garden: is it a true labyrinth or a book about the labyrinth?
In The Secret Miracle a man is condemned to the firing squad basically for being an erudite Jew. He tries to stop his execution by attempting to foresee all the details of the endless possibilities of the execution -- number of soldiers firing, how far away they stand, where it will take place, etc. -- knowing that it is impossible to imagine all these details correctly, so that if he imagines all possible scenarios, his execution can’t happen. He prays for a year to finish the book he is working on. He is granted that wish to finish the book in his head in the suspension of time between bullets leaving the guns and their impact on his body.
Three Versions of Judas is in effect a religious work arguing that Judas’ betrayal of Christ was superfluous. His action wasn’t needed to betray a master who daily preached in the synagogue and performed miracles before gatherings of thousands of people. But maybe the betrayal was necessary for God to prove his divinity.
And we have humor:
A hotel “…which most manifestly unites the hateful whiteness of a sanitorium, the numbered divisibility of a prison, and the general appearance of a bawdy house…”
“This delay [in an execution] was due to a desire on the part of the authorities to act slowly and impersonally, in the manner of planets or vegetables.”
“In life, he suffered from a sense of unreality, as do many Englishmen; dead, he is not even the ghostly creature he was then.”
Why a rating of 4 rather than 5? Perhaps because the stories are starting to show their age. They were all written in the 1940’s and 50’s. Maybe we need a new translation – the edition I read was translated in 1956. Borges has had so many imitators, some are quite good, such as the stories by his countryman, Julio Cortazar, in All Fires the Fire, which I reviewed here https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
It’s fun to think how Borges would be writing stories today about the internet and cell phones!
Illustration of the Library of Babel from americandigest.org
Photo of the Borges Labyrinth in Venice planted on the 25th anniversary of his death. (1899-1986). From oddviser.com/italy
Rating: really liked it
*edited on 27.05.19
I now held in my hands a vast and systematic fragment of the entire history of an unknown planet, with its architectures and its playing cards, the horror of its mythologies and the murmur of its tongues, its emperors and its seas, its minerals and its birds and fishes, its algebra and its fire, its theological and the metaphysical controversies- all joined, articulated, coherent, and with no visible doctrinal purpose or hint of parody. 
What could be said about a book which is in itself many books in a book or many authors in one, for are you capable enough to said anything? What genre could encapsulate the breadth of this gem, which has been shining through the vagaries and austerity of time and space, of literature? What so called forms- which could have been defined by whatever produced, known and understood of literature (for we are one and one is all)- could best describe it, be it novel, poetry, non-novel, short story or essay, philosophy, memoir and others for that matter. For it surpasses all the known (or created) formal or informal forms of literature. The abovementioned questions come up from the vague recesses of our consciousness and challenge our so called knowledge and understanding of literature as we have known it. These questions tremble our shallow buildings of self- appeasing knowledge and send great discomfort for us to realize that we have absolutely no idea about literature, for our mind has been tied to the strings of dogmas, references (for as human beings we need them) which we have been telling ourselves since the very inception of literature. A sense of shame creeps up for us to recognize that we are quite mediocre in our so called progress, for we have kept beating around the bush. And perhaps the courage of all our might has not been assembled to produce something original in itself, which may have a being unto itself and doesn’t require anything else to define its existence. But then, suddenly, a sense of solace find its way to our heart and we come to discern that we are not Borges, for there had been only one, there would (may) be only one, for his style is inimitable. There have been very few authors in the history of literature who could produce such impact of originality and Borges is certainly right up there.
There are many men adept in those diverse disciplines, but few capable of imagination- fewer will capable of subordinating imagination to rigorous and systematic plan. The plan is so vast that the contribution of each writer is infinitesimal. Fictions introduced entirely new voice into world literature. The collection continues to be among the most read, commented on and alluded to fictions of the century and despite the quality of so much of Borges’s subsequent works, the collection continues to be most sought after book, perhaps have become his identity over the years. What was striking about
Fictions is that whenever and wherever it come to existence it immediately grabbed the imagination of readers- for it is quintessential for a reader to be imaginative to understand Borges’s world. As we say one overdoes something until one perfects it, Borges has developed a much serene, subtler prose from the baroque style employing strained and startling metaphors from his early days, and mind you that quieter style has beauty of undertones which may take you to so many avenues in so little words. He became so adept at his style in 40s that it got a particular name- Borgesian- like those of Dickensian and Kafkaesque. But there was more than just the style, the unclassificability and originality of these stories were among the most prominent factors which led uncomfortable but curious stir among readers and writers of that time, probably still continues to do in modern world.
Borges’s prose style is characterized by an economy of resources in which words are being weighted through patience and erudite imagination which produce an truly original voice whose effects are not pompous but rather produced with a few words which may seem to be fitted into the sentence without disturbing its divine serenity and quietness. The prose style of Borges may come across as intellectual with its allusion to literature (which may be both existent or non- existent), philosophy, religion, theology, myth, culture, history of Latin America He deftly used parallelism, chiasmus, subtle repetitions-with-variations to shock the reader in a pleasant way. He combined literary and extraliterary genres in order to create a dynamic, electric genre. The ingenious playing with the boundaries of genre was underlined by playfulness, cleverly though, in both prose style and attitude. Borges was having real fun with these stories. One just has to sit back and enjoy spotting the playfulness; one learn that Borges’s ways were mysterious and sometimes may be incomprehensible to naïve men. We find that such spontaneous and playful attitude existed even in the most serious of his stories and readers unaccustomed to such techniques were constantly being made to feel just bit off balance. This serious, high literature that sometimes went just over one’s head or was this sport, spoof, playing, perhaps it was both. The characters are not being developed like in traditional fiction, the role of the characters is just to create effect, which comes up on the surface of the story, and then to dissolve in nothingness to convey the greater theme of the story. Borges considered and discarded seemingly all the previously known forms of literature and philosophy, creates a world ex nihilo- for there was nothing to write and nothing be written. Yet minutely studied, Borges, like Kafka, under close scrutiny reveals subtle affinities with other forms of literature, exhibits an unmistakable existential angst. This new wave of literature reintroduced irony, angst, existential dilemma, a knowing worldliness which was overshadowed by seriousness and realism of previous age. There have been ingenious authors in past too but it had taken them hundreds of pages and the invention of an entirely new language to communicate what Borges has done in sparingly three or four pages. He has managed to turn language upon itself to reverse himself time after time with a sentence or a paragraph with relentless logic so that it comes up as a pleasant surprise.
Borges’s universe is successive in nature where in there is a heterogenous series of independent acts, the world is temporal not spatial as we generally know it on earth. The universe is based on all possible probabilities which in turn give rise to infinite successive possibilities which give birth to infinite universes co-existing together in a labyrinth, which is surreal, does not have clear demarcation between physics and metaphysics; real and unreal; right and wrong; myth and belief; the rules are, of course, different than that in our universe. The language and things derived from the language- religion, literature, metaphysics, myth- presuppose idealism. These universes are congenitally, idealistic. There is only one discipline which is psychology to which all others are subordinate. The fiction has only one plot, with every imaginable permutation; the works of philosophy invariably contains both thesis and antithesis. There is a library (or universe itself) which contains all possible books of entire universe or rather multiverses in it; all books, however different from one another they might be, consist of identical elements: the space, the period, the comma and letters of alphabet; so the library has all the possible combinations of all letters of the alphabet. There is a person in Borges’s universe who may reconstruct every dream, every day dream he had ever had. He can even reconstruct an entire day and he had never erred. Several people count the same quantity come to the same result is an example of association of ideas or of memorization, for subject knowledge is one and eternal there. There are paths which fork from themselves and lead unto themselves. These universes are built upon various possibilities of a tussle between chance and self -determinism. These parallel or successive universes repeats themselves as a hand of card does after multiple runs. While we sleep in one universe, we are awake somewhere else, so every men is in fact many men, all men are one and one is all men. The space is not conceived as having duration in time, posterior stage of subject can’t affect universe, only prior stages can do. There is no concept of time there, for present is undefined and indefinite, the future has no reality except as present hope, and the past has no reality except as present recollection. It is believed that time passes differently for everyone for it is not uniform, depends upon medium and perceiver. Perhaps all the time has already passed, so that our life is but the crepuscular memory, or crepuscular reflection, doubtlessly distorted and mutilated, of an irrecoverable process.
I recall him (though I have no right to speak that sacred verb- only one man on earth did, and the man is dead) holding a dark passionflower in his hand, seeing it as it has never been seen, even had it been stared at from the first light of dawn till the last light of evening for an entire lifetime. The stories of the collection co-exist in the same labyrinth wherein the reader may move one to another through strings of probabilities, intertextuality (for some of the stories refer to other and narrator in one stories talks about creation of another one). The boundaries between fact and fiction, between essay and short story are being expertly blended and the border between genres too is obliterated quite adeptly. In fact, he created three genres- the essay, the poem and the short story (as mentioned by Octavio Paz) but the division is arbitrary: his essays read like stories, his stories are poems and his poems are essays.
Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius, The Library of Babel, The Lottery in Babylon, The Circular Ruins, The Secret Miracle and The South seem to belong science fiction or fantasy, although in their treatment of their major themes, they are more erudite and philosophical in nature. The themes of chance versus determination, conception and writing of our history, ideation and transmission of philosophical and mathematical systems; existence of various levels of realities could be explored in these stories of the collection. While other ones-
The Approach to Al-Mu’tasim, Pierre Menard, A Survey of the Works of Herbert Quain and The Versions of Judascome across as book reviews or critical monographs of non-existent books but they were as convincing as any reviews or criticisms may be.
Funes, His Memory, The Garden of Forking Paths and The Shape of the Sword could be said as imaginative fiction where fictions-about-fictions anticipated metafictional concerns of postmodernism. We find traits of detective fiction too in
The Garden of Forking Paths, Death and the Compass and The Theme of the Traitor amd the Hero on the other hand
The Circular Ruins, The Lottery of Babylon and The Cult of the Phoenix were told in a style that recalled myth and were set in distant times and places that made them seem parables, both ageless and perfectly contemporary. But all the stories are common in a sense that we may find an existential angst in all of them wherein either characters or narrators or the story itself struggles to define its existence in the unique world of Borges.
Borges’s own diminishing eye sight perhaps helped his imagination to grow leaps and bound than to cause harm to him, which resulted such an extraordinary achievement in world literature. It is one of those unforgettable experiences which one may come across once in a lifetime but every word of this gem is worth it. In his essay on Borges, Perez wrote that he has created his own type of post-avant-grade literature- which shows the process of critical self- examination that reveals the moment in which literature becomes a reflection of itself, distanced from life- on order to reveal the formal and intellectual density involved in writing.
I am something of a connoisseur of mazes: not for nothing am I the great-grandson of that Ts-ui Pen who power in order to write a novel containing more characters than the Hung Lu Meng and construct a labyrinth in which all men would lose their way. 
Rating: really liked it
Are there fictional tales with such philosophical significance somewhere in all of literature? At Lessing, at Novalis, at Kafka, at Hesse, at Kierkegaard, perhaps? In any case, we swim in these waters there, in excellent company!
The stories arise from all kinds of horizons (mystical, fantastic, erudition, news stories, etc.) to spread with authority and confidence before the fascinated mind of the reader I am. And the ideas and the perspectives employed have taken me to all spiritual and philosophical depths while entertaining me with high efficiency.
I also enjoyed the struggle for freedom expressed in several novels, Tlön, Orbis Tertius and The Lottery in Babylon. How often have I come across an evocation of news from this collection? I cannot say! Probably as often as on invocations of Aesop's Fables or Andersen's Tales! A reader needs to know certain precise information, to grasp the meaning of what expressing and the impression that must emanate from it, and it is to the word that Borges always delivers the right measure to him. It is possible that the message does not get through to some, but every chance will have been made available to it to keep its attention and interest to their maximum levels.
Yes, for me, Borges writes what he wants with uncompromising elegance. They have become essential in the history of Western thought, and he will have had the chance to know them during his lifetime. What a beautiful collection of philosophical novels!
Rating: really liked it
Borges looked inside the swirling mind of man and made a maze of it. A glorious maze! The maze that is Ficciones is a maze built of mazes, one opening unto another, circling around and looping back, an infinity of mazes, small as the smallest of small minds, large as the universe can be imagined. Its architecture is delicate and refined; the wry wit of its creator is apparent in every twist and turn. Borges' maze gently mocks yet empathizes with the self-important, the self-absorbed, and the self-denying. He understands the foibles of man and his maze offers diverse commentaries on such things. But there are darker things lurking beneath that amiable surface; Ficciones is more than an academician's cleverly constructed playground. Beware the prickly thorns of this maze! There is anger there, under the charm and the playful games; anger at the systems of man and the futility of certain behaviors, at the machinery of government. There is sadness there too, at the thought of those who would treat such mazes as homes, at the machinations of fate.
Like every writer, he measured the virtues of other writers by their performance, and asked that they measure him by what he conjectured or planned.
An ironic dig, but that phrase is more than a shot fired. Borges is fascinated by the concept that if something has been thought about, has acquired meaning through that contemplation, then that something has become real. Thought creates its own reality, and reality is composed of varied systems of being and behavior; thought becomes the way that reality is interpreted - and therefore enacted.
Ficciones tells stories about stories: each story is about the perspective of mankind, the symbols this species clings to, the metaphors they attempt to turn into living, breathing reality. Ficciones is an imaginarium; it is a weird and haunted carnival of games and sideshows come to life. It is a dazzling display of comic, sometimes cosmic gems... and each gem includes a seam of tragedy, fractures that can sometimes be seen on the surface but are most often buried within its heart.
Oh the mysterious fallibility and hypocrisy of the human kind! Their failures and their attempts to transcend their fates! The mazes and fictions that they create - and then proceed to live in!
each story title is a link to something that that story made me think about...Part One: THE GARDEN OF FORKING PATHS
Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius
The Approach to Al-Mu'tasim
Pierre Menard, Author of Don Quixote
discard the downloadThe Circular Ruins
The Babylon Lottery
An Examination of the Work of Herbert Quain
The Library of Babel
The Garden of Forking Paths
Part Two: ARTIFICES
Funes, the Memorious
The Form of the Sword
Theme of the Traitor and Hero
Death and the Compass
The Secret Miracle
Three Versions of Judas
The End
The Sect of the Phoenix
The South
Rating: really liked it
To me
Fictions by
Jorge Luis Borges is the ultimate anthology of short stories… I find in it everything I ever want to find in literature: reality and surreality, realness and surrealness, fables and parables, legends and myths, mysticism and philosophy, history and fantasy and an endless enigma.
I owe the discovery of Uqbar to the conjunction of a mirror and an encyclopedia. The mirror troubled the far end of a hallway in a large country house on Calle Gaona, in Ramos Mejia; the encyclopedia is misleadingly titled The Anglo-American Cyclopaedia (New York, 1917), and is a literal (though also laggardly) reprint of the 1902 Encyclopœdia Britannica. The event took place about five years ago.
Yes, use a combination of mirrors, labyrinths and books and you too will be capable to live an idyllic, fabulous and mysterious life whenever you wish…
With one quick look, you and I perceive three wineglasses on a table; Funes perceived every grape that had been pressed into the wine and all the stalks and tendrils of its vineyard. He knew the forms of the clouds in the southern sky on the morning of April 30,1882, and he could compare them in his memory with the veins in the marbled binding of a book he had seen only once, or with the feathers of spray lifted by an oar on the Rio Negro on the eve of the Battle of Quebracho. Nor were those memories simple—every visual image was linked to muscular sensations, thermal sensations, and so on. He was able to reconstruct every dream, every daydream he had ever had.
A perfect memory and ability of perfect vision turns into a curse and we understand that our capability to forget is actually a divine gift.
And
Death and the Compass is an utmost detective story, an utter post-noir tale for me. I believe that this elaborate maze of misconceptions, false steps and deception was a main influence on Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco.
“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
Rating: really liked it
I've just finished the seventeenth and final story in this volume. My symmetry-loving self is pleased to note that I've been reading and rereading these seventeen Borges' stories for exactly seventeen days. Incidentally, Borges says
reality favours symmetries.
Another symmetry which strikes me is that the seventeenth story mirrors the fifteenth story which is called
The End though we might expect the seventeenth story to be called
The End instead. In any case, the seventeenth story is packed with many of the elements I had noticed in the earlier stories which makes it the perfect one to end the volume as well as to use as a launch pad for my thoughts on this first Borges reading experience.
The South, for that is the name of the seventeenth story, begins in a typical (as I now realise) Borges manner with a factual sounding paragraph that could be straight out of an essay or a history book. Precise dates and place names and other historical references add weight to this impression, and the reader might feel overwhelmed by the amount of detail packed into that first paragraph.
Which details will be useful ones to remember later, I wondered, as my mind reeled from the concentration of facts. The dates themselves destabilised me because one minute the story seemed to be set in 1871 and the next in 1939.
Borges often uses numbers, shapes, places and compass points in his stories, and that numerical, spatial, geometrical and temporal data, combined with uncertainty about whether the 'facts' are historical or fictional, made me feel as if the ground was shifting beneath my feet, as in the twelfth story,
Death and the Compass:
…the second crime occurred on the night of the third of January....and the letter prophesied that on the third of March there would not be a fourth crime.But just when I might abandon a story in confusion (as you might abandon this review), Borges offers an axiom that has the effect of a strong coffee, setting me back on solid ground, able to pay complete attention and avoid being slapped in the face by any further red herrings:
destiny can be ruthless at one's slightest distraction.
This is the stage when the story proper begins, or perhaps continues, since Borges likes to drop us into the middle of a story from time to time. Or indeed the 'story' might not 'begin' at all leaving the narrative to continue in the mode of an essay. That's only one of the games Borges likes to play with his readers, and when I understood how playful his writing could be, I enjoyed his stories much more.
I also learned to look out for the signs that I shouldn't take everything literally as in the story called
The Sect of the Phoenix which seems to be about a secret activity known only to an obscure group but instead turns out to be about something we all do instinctively and without which life couldn't go on. The story is very funny especially as Borges inserts corks and sealing wax into the scenario!
However humour is generally not so apparent in Borges's writing, and certainly not in the ninth story about Ireneo Funes who is cursed with a phenomenal memory, not only of every word he had read but every transient pattern on water or in the sky, every scrap of dream he ever had. The oddest thing about that odd story is that, as I read it, I remembered reading it before though I had been certain that this volume of stories was my first experience of reading Borges! Unfortunately, unlike Ireneo, I cannot recollect where or when I read
Funes, the Memorious, just that I did.
By stressing the weightiness of Borges's stories, and the red herrings that distracted me sometimes, I may have given the impression that the stories are long. The opposite is true.
The South might well be one of the longest, at only eight pages while
The End is one of the shortest at a mere four pages, and is an example of Borges's ability, when he so chooses, to make every word count: the setting, the timing, the oblique view of the action are precise and perfect.
As I said earlier, those two stories are mirror images of each other, and, what's more,
The South is divided into two halves which are mirror images of themselves.
Orbis terrarum est speculum Ludi: The world is mirror to the game, says Borges in the thirteenth story, quoting a sixteenth century Latinist. Indeed mirrors and symmetry seem to be as much a part of his writing tools as games themselves are. And although he is Argentinian, it's as if the entire world is his playing field, or his chessboard to continue the mirror/game metaphor. As I began each new story, I never knew where it was going to be situated, south or north, west or east. And I was pleasantly surprised to find that several stories were set in my native country, or at least had characters who came from there. They weren't the most heroic of characters perhaps but I have no illusions about my countrymen so I wasn't perturbed.
In any case, the countries Borges described became entirely new territories for me, places I have never visited or could never visit. He has created his own Orbis Terrarum with its own compass points, and as I read, I felt like an explorer, going where no one has ever gone before. I felt I'd discovered the planet Borges.
Rating: really liked it
A series of laconic, fantastical tales that provoke thought at every turn. The collection’s made up of seventeen stories packed with irony, metaphors, and allusions to works of literature from a vast array of places and times, but all the pieces have easy-to-understand concepts. In one the writer allegorizes the universe as infinite library, and in another he explores Argentinian identity through a man’s fantasy of a heroic death. The work invites rereading.
Rating: really liked it
4.5 stars, rounding up. I read and then reread several of these stories (some of them for a third time) while I was writing my final review for Fantasy Literature, and they keep impressing me more ... for the most part. My literary friends will be so proud of me! :D So here's the full review, where you can follow along with the journey of myself and my (severely challenged, but ultimately edified) brain cells ...
Ficciones is a classic collection of seventeen short stories by acclaimed Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges, originally published in the 1940s in Spanish, and winner of the 1961 International Publishers Prize. These stories and mock essays are a challenging mixture of philosophy, magical realism, fantasy, ruminations on the nature of life, perception and more. There are layers of meaning and frequent allusions to historic figures, other literary works, and philosophical ideas, not readily discernable at first read. Reading Ficciones, and trying to grasp the concepts in it, was definitely the major mental workout of the year for me. My brain nearly overloaded several times, but reading some critical analyses of these works helped tremendously with my understanding and appreciation of these works … well, at least most of them.
The stories in
Ficciones are divided into two parts: The first part,
The Garden of Forking Paths (
El Jardín de senderos que se bifurcan) was originally published in 1941. The first six stories in Part Two,
Artifices, were added in 1944, and the collection was named
Ficciones at that time. Borges added the final three stories to Ficciones in the 1956 edition.
Part One:
The Garden of Forking Paths“Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius” ― The narrator tells how his search for information about Uqbar, mentioned to him by a friend and found in only one edition of an encyclopedia, leads him to Uqbar’s literature about the imaginary world of Tlön, with its fantastical culture steeped in psychological and philosophical concepts. A brief taste:
The nations of that planet [Tlön] are congenitally idealist. Their language, with its derivatives ― religion, literature, and metaphysics ― presupposes idealism. For them, the world is not a concurrence of objects in space, but a heterogeneous series of independent acts. It is serial and temporal, but not spatial. There are no nouns in the hypothetical Ursprache of Tlön, which is the source of the living language and the dialects; there are impersonal verbs qualified by monosyllabic suffixes or prefixes which have the force of adverbs.
Heady stuff! This twenty page story (the longest in the book) is so abstruse and heavily laden with philosophical ideas and allusions that I found it almost completely impenetrable. It reminded me of trying to read James Joyce’s Ulysses. I was so completely lost that I’ll confess I had to put this book down and retreat to a fluffy romance while I mentally regrouped for another attack on this book. Brain cell verdict: no response. They totally shorted out on this one.
“The Approach to Al-Mu’tasim” ― This allegorical story purports to be a review of the titular novel, about the years-long pilgrimage of a law student in India, who murders a man in a riot and falls among the lowest of society. When he perceives a note of tenderness and clarity in one of these vile men, he concludes that it is the reflection of a perfect man who exists somewhere. The student embarks on a lengthy search for this man, whom he calls Al-Mu’tasim. We have met the divine and it is us. My brain cells concluded that, although some of the allusions are obscure, this tale is far more readily grasped than the first one. There is hope!
“Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote” ― Another story set up as a mock review of one Pierre Menard’s attempt to recreate Don Quixote ― not copy it, but study Cervantes and his world so deeply that he can write Don Quixote exactly as it was originally written. The reviewer lauds Menard’s work, which uses the identical words as Cervantes, as far richer and more profound than the original. It’s satirical in tone, but otherwise I was at a loss as to the theme and meaning of this work. The brain cells were getting restive again.
“The Circular Ruins” ― A stranger makes his way into the circle of ruins of an ancient temple, lies down and begins to dream, with great purpose: he wants to dream a man, to create a son to whom he will be the father, by imagining him in great detail. It succeeded for me as a symbol of the creative process of authors, even though I’m still wading through tricky but entrancing sentences like this:
He understood that modeling the incoherent and vertiginous matter of which dreams are composed was the most difficult task that a man could undertake, even though he should penetrate all the enigmas of a superior and inferior order; much more difficult than weaving a rope out of sand or coining the faceless wind.
It’s still a challenge, but my brain cells are starting to feel a little more hopeful. So we moved on to …
“The Lottery in Babylon” ― In the city of Babylon, a lottery morphs into an game that takes over all aspects of life in Babylon. A lucky drawing might lead you to be elevated to the council of wizards or reunite you with a long-lost love; a losing ticket might land you in jail, or get your tongue burned, or lead to infamy or death. The ubiquitous lottery seems to be a symbol of the capriciousness of chance in life and the story in general seems to be taking an ironic view of the questionable role of deity in human life. My favorite part was the sly reference to Franz Kafka in the form of the “sacred privy called Qaphqa,” where informants can leave accusations for agents of the Company that runs the lottery. The brain cells were quite amused.
“An Examination of the Work of Herbert Quain” ― This is another satirical review piece, purporting to review four (non-existent) works written by a (fictional) author. Borges playfully explores the labyrinth concept in different ways in each of these works. This story, frankly, didn’t leave much of an impression on me.
“The Library of Babel” ― One of Borges’ most famous stories, “The Library of Babel” posits a universe in the form of a library made out of connected hexagonal rooms, each room filled with books and the barest necessities for life. Each book contains 410 pages, with 40 lines of 80 letters each. There are 25 letters and punctuation marks in the alphabet. The Library contains every possible combination of those letters. Most of the books are complete gibberish, of course, but like the Infinite Monkey Theorem says, if you have enough monkeys banging away on typewriters for long enough, eventually they’ll write Hamlet. But life for the people dwelling in this library is profoundly frustrating, even depressing, since only a vanishingly small percentage of the books make any sense at all. Borges explores the ways that people react to this, with several nods to religion and philosophy. Mathematicians have had a field day with this book’s concept, figuring out how many books such a library would contain. Per Wikipedia’s article on this story, there would be far more books in this library (1.956 x 10 to the 1,834,097th power) than there are thought to be atoms in the observable universe (10 to the 80th power).
“The Garden of Forking Paths” ― Dr. Yu Tsun, a Chinese professor of English, is living in Great Britain during WWI. Dr. Yu is spying for Imperial Germany for a psychologically complicated reason: he wants to prove to his prejudiced German chief that a person of his race, a “yellow man,” can save the German armies. Yu discovers that an MI5 agent, Richard Madden (an Irishman who also has equivocal feelings about the nation he is serving, due to his nationality) has captured another German spy and is on the verge of finding him. Dr. Yu goes on the run. The plot is thickened by the fact that Dr. Yu has just found out the location of a new British artillery park. How can he pass that information to his German handler before he’s captured? This is the first story in this book that has a substantial plot to go along with the play of ideas; hence, I enjoyed reading it more than the previous tales. The concepts in it are not as mentally challenging, although the labyrinth imagery and philosophical conjectures resurface toward the end. Still, “The Garden of Forking Paths” was straightforward enough that my brain cells didn’t hurt too much trying to wrap themselves around the story.
Part Two:
Artifices“Funes the Memorious” ― Borges, as narrator, meets up with a young Uruguayan boy, Ireneo Funes, who has the ability to tell you exactly what time it is without looking at a clock. When Borges returns to this village three years later, Funes is now crippled from being thrown by a wild horse, but his mind is unimpaired. The narrator realizes that Funes also now has an infallible memory, with perfect recall. But the depth and detail of Funes’ memory makes it impossible for him to grasp general, abstract ideas.
To think is to forget a difference, to generalize, to abstract. In the overly replete world of Funes there were nothing but details, almost contiguous details.
This tale was, again, a little too opaque and short on plot for me to really enjoy. The brain cells were grumbling a little.
“The Form of the Sword” ― In this story, which deals with themes of identity and betrayal, the narrator is passing through a town and asks an “Englishman” whom he meets there (actually an Irishman) about the terrible, crescent-shaped scar across his face. The Irishman tells a story of his involvement in the battle for Irish independence, and his dealings with a disagreeable, cowardly man named John Vincent Moon. There’s a twist to this tale, echoing the Irishman’s portentous comment that “[w]hat one man does is something done, in some measure, by all men.”
“Theme of the Traitor and the Hero” ― A man named Ryan researches the death of his great-grandfather, an Irish nationalist hero named Fergus Kilpatrick, who was assassinated and is now viewed as a martyr to the cause of Irish independence. Something about the manner of Fergus Kilpatrick’s death strikes Ryan as enigmatic, a series of events that are like “circular labyrinths” (that image again!), oddly echoing elements from Macbeth and Julius Caesar, Shakespeare’s classic tragedies of betrayal. In “Theme of the Traitor and the Hero” the conceptual aspects of this tale don’t override the compelling plot, and this was one of the stories I really loved.
“Death and the Compass” ― Erik Lönnrot, a highly intellectual detective, works to solve a strange set of murders by figuring out the pattern underlying them and the clues left by the murderer, referencing the unspeakable Hebrew four-letter name for God. Lönnrot foresees a final murder, but can he prevent it? As Lönnrot explores the house where he has deduced the final murder is to occur, once again we have maze-like imagery:
On the second floor, on the top story, the house seemed to be infinite and growing. The house is not this large, he thought. It is only made larger by the penumbra, the symmetry, the mirrors, the years, my ignorance, the solitude.
This detective story had enough philosophy in it to make it intriguing and give it more depth than a typical mystery, but not overload my brain cells, which are feeling like they’re now on a roll.
“The Secret Miracle” ― A Jewish playwright is arrested by the Nazis and sentenced to die by firing squad. All he wants is the ability to finish up a play he has been working on, his masterpiece. A divine voice tells him that he will be granted the time to do this — even though he is set to die the next day. But God works in mysterious ways, and the playwright is able to weave “a lofty invisible labyrinth in time.”
“Three Versions of Judas” ― In yet another mock literary review, Borges reviews three imaginary works by Nils Runeberg about Judas, the betrayer of Christ. Borges-as-Runeberg recasts the character and nature of Judas in three different, heretical ways, including as a righteous man who knowingly accepted his role as the person who would force Jesus to declare his divinity, and even as another incarnation of God Himself. He challenges our comfortable religious views.
“The End” ― A shopkeeper, who has suffered a paralyzing stroke and is lying on a cot, sees and overhears a confrontation between a Negro man, who has been hanging around the shopkeeper’s store, playing his guitar and waiting, and a man who rides up to meet him. Their conversation makes it clear that the black man has been waiting seven years for this meeting. As mentioned in an editor’s footnote, this brief, bleak story is essentially a coda to a famous Argentine 19th century epic folk poem, “Martin Fierro,” about the life of a violent gaucho. In a famous scene in the poem, Fierro crudely provokes a black man and then kills him in the resulting knife fight. Several years later, in this story, Fierro is an aging man with some regrets for the life he has lived, and whose free and lawless gaucho way of life is passing. Once I really grasped the connection between the poem and this story, it became one of my favorites in this collection.
“The Sect of the Phoenix” ― There is a group of people in all societies and times, tied together by the Secret that they share, which Borges coyly never reveals. Is it sexual intercourse? Or perhaps more particularly, homosexual sex?
In the prologue to Artifices, Borges comments:
In the allegory of the Phoenix I imposed upon myself the problem of hinting at an ordinary fact ― the Secret ― in an irresolute and gradual manner, which, in the end, would prove to be unequivocal; I do not know how fortunate I have been. Of “The South,” which is perhaps my best story, let it suffice for me to suggest that it can be read as a direct narrative of novelistic events, and also in another way.
“The South” ― This is one of my favorite stories in this collection, as well as Borges’. The main character is Juan Dahlmann, a mixture of German and Spanish ancestry, whose life is mundane but who dreams vaguely of a more romantic life, inspired by the Flores side of his heritage and the Flores ranch in the South that he owns but has never visited. One day Dahlmann brushes his forehead against something in a dark stairway and realizes afterwards that he is bleeding. He develops a life-threatening infection and is taken to a sanitarium for treatment. After many excruciatingly painful and feverish days, he recovers, and decides that he will take a trip to his ranch to convalesce. He travels out of the city on a train, feeling as though he is traveling into the past, and has an unexpected confrontation as he nears his final destination. Or does he? You decide, but several clues in the text ― a mysterious cat, a spitball that brushes his face, a dagger tossed to him by an old gaucho ― have led me unequivocally to my own conclusion. The brain cells, by the way, were completely engaged by this tale, which was complex and layered enough to make me think, but didn’t lose me in a labyrinth of difficult-to-grasp ideas.
Repeated labyrinth imagery, scenes of deception, and challenges to our perceptions of what is real echo throughout the stories of
Ficciones. These stories are often elusive, twisting out of your grasp or revealing unexpected depths just when you think you’ve got a handle on them. Even the lightest stories have several layers and hidden meanings to unpack. If you’re interested in philosophical ideas and are up for a literary challenge, I highly recommend
Ficciones. The 1962 English translation by Anthony Kerrigan and other translators is excellent.
Rating: really liked it
3.5/5
There can be at times circumstances that affect your thoughts on what's being read. Or even just the way that you read it. This is one of those very occasion where I will undoubtedly benefit reading again. It's clear to see why Jorge Luis Borges is regarded as one of the 20th century's most inventive writers, and Ficciones is a collection of small stories that are on a grand scale, but my overall problem was going through three or four at a time and finding them hard to digest, jumping from one to another just didn't work for me. And only read the last few days apart giving me a chance to fully think about about them, this worked so much better, but still left me feeling a bit dumbfounded. Also was not reading the best translated version, so that didn't help either.
Borges never compromised himself by writing a novel but instead left a whole library of delicately structured maze-like speculations. Each one is like the Tardis – little time-machines of the imagination and far bigger within than they appear on the outside, and there is certainly plenty to keep one occupied: writers, dreamers, heretics, young men with impossible memories, other worlds revealed by secret encyclopedias, traitors transformed by betrayal, conspirators that plot their own downfall: 17 pieces, none longer than 25 pages; none shorter than a lifetime. It's difficult to pick a favourite but 'Death and the Compass' and 'The Sect of the Phoenix' were two that I read twice.
I am sure this collection will grow on me, and multiple readings built up over time will no doubt chance my perception from reading the first time, into something very special indeed!
Rating: really liked it
Ok, I'd tried to read Labyrinths years ago and found it dry and dull. I thought that perhaps I just wasn't in the proper state of mind, or perhaps wasn't well read enough to get it. I'd also come off of a Calvino kick, so Borges felt boring. Fast forward to me thinking that I really should commit to Borges and give him a real chance.
I have to say that hard a hard time with this book. I only really like one story The Babylonian Lottery. The Circular Ruins, The Library of Babel, The Garden of Forking Paths and The Secret Miracle being alright and scant few others like An Examination of Herbert Quain and The End only fair.
Most of the time I feel like I'm stuck as some shitty academic after-party listening to the drunken rambling of a self-indulgent lit professor trying to make himself believe that he is the smartest guy in the room. I get the references, but most of this just isn't that interesting. It all comes across as clinical, with a tone of little Jack Horner self satisfaction staring at his thumb saying "What a good boy am I."
Let me write you a Borges story:
I could write a longer story dear reader, but instead I will keep to laconic prose. I met Arkadiusz Juhász when he threw a crust of bread at my head and laughed in that way that he does. At the time, I was simultaneously reading De Natura Deorum, Hasidic Kabbalah, and Discours de Métaphysique. [Fill page one with nonsense that isn't all that important to the story, feels otherworldly, and serves only to offset and confuse the reader]. At dinner Arkadiusz Juhász described the labyrinth in his mind. He had an experience the likes of which you will never have. Jews are mysterious. He solved a puzzle that he created for himself and figured out that he is Shakespeare and everyone wrote Henry V for it has always existed. There is a long history of naming a thing, but in reality everything is the same. Arkadiusz Juhász felt disjointed from the world and wandered and time passed with little result. Perhaps he was in a sanitarium with black circling walls. Arkadiusz Juhász has written a collection of essays to describe the effect of his travels. Here is the list: Darkest Jungles 1898; The Diminishing Return 1900; Checkers and the Vanishing Point 1904; The Breadbox 1904; The Unhappy Happenstance 1906 (unfinished); Ur Nuts 1907; Life in a Ziggurat 1909 (never actually written); The Aching Feather 1910; Critical Analysis of Being Spanish 1912 (writen in Portugese and German). [Describe some of these essays]. Arkadiusz Juhász confessed to me that he was really a war criminal. But, I later found out that he may not have been. Arkadiusz Juhász died of a brain hemorrhage in 1951.
Rating: really liked it
“Blind to all fault, destiny can be ruthless at one's slightest distraction.”
Reading Jorge Luis Borges is a bewildering experience and a challenge all in one. There is no logically understanding the mazes Borges creates, but that is what
fantastical-realism is all about. Ficciones is a labyrinth, beautiful and witty, of ideas and feelings that mock and conquers the reader.
Borges can speak for himself, who am I to explain his brilliance and imagination?
“When it was proclaimed that the Library contained all books, the first impression was one of extravagant happiness. All men felt themselves to be the masters of an intact and secret treasure. There was no personal or world problem whose eloquent solution did not exist in some hexagon. The universe was justified, the universe suddenly usurped the unlimited dimensions of hope. At that time a great deal was said about the Vindications: books of apology and prophecy which vindicated for all time the acts of every man in the universe and retained prodigious arcana for his future. Thousands of the greedy abandoned their sweet native hexagons and rushed up the stairways, urged on by the vain intention of finding their Vindication. These pilgrims disputed in the narrow corridors, proffered dark curses, strangled each other on the divine stairways, flung the deceptive books into the air shafts, met their death cast down in a similar fashion by the inhabitants of remote regions. Others went mad ... The Vindications exist (I have seen two which refer to persons of the future, to persons who are perhaps not imaginary) but the searchers did not remember that the possibility of a man's finding his Vindication, or some treacherous variation thereof, can be computed as zero.”
A masterpiece, not to be missed!
Rating: really liked it
Metaphor
Infinity Sophistry Penumbra Symbolic LABYRINTH Heresiarch
Prefigured Philology Nihilism Maze Allegorical
This may not be the prettiest word cloud ever constructed, but I think it’s a fair representation of the
Ficciones experience. Much of the time spent trying to solve the stories’ puzzles involves bandying these concepts about. I can’t honestly say I understood them all, but moments when something did click were exciting because the ideas behind them were subtle and cryptic. Comprehension somehow boosts us to a higher plane. The ultimate in advancement, if it can be imagined, is the universal infinitude of all experience.*
The more grounded me says, Steve, aren’t you kinda, like, talkin’ out your ass? And the more grounded me answers, yes. However, I contend that Borges himself, if asked, might have said the same thing (though surely more artfully). For him, I think, it was the mind-bending absurdity of the questions he posed rather than some metaphysical (and unattainable) truth of the matter that excited him. It’s hard to describe these stories to anyone who hasn’t read them, and harder still to back what I’m saying by way of example. Instead what I’ll attempt is a bit of Borges-inspired logic that may not have been the exact point of his stories, but occurred to me as a result of reading them.
If we take as a given that time is infinite, then every possible set of realities would have a chance to play out. If in one iteration I typed an O here, I could in another type an X, with all else being the same. Every single permutation imaginable could occur as each Big Bang and collapse in infinite time came to fruition. Imagine the implications! Borges did, at least in a way. In one story he imagined a near infinite library containing books with every possible letter combination. In such a place, a man could conceivably find the story of his life, though practically speaking, and without Google, it would be damned difficult. Borges also considered a single book that could contain all knowledge, made possible by pages that were infinitesimally thin. (Zeno’s paradox, as Borges mentioned, can be explained in a similar way where infinitely many infinitely small increments can be summed to something we can observe in the physically limited world.) To Borges, a labyrinth is a similar metaphor of life. Each person has a complex set of turns in a ridiculously intricate path that I think represents every decision we face – right, left, X, O, date, dump – whatever. It’s this kind of thing that the man of many places (he lived in Argentina, Switzerland and Spain) and many languages (he translated Wilde, Shakespeare, Kafka, Poe, Hesse, Gide, Whitman and Woolf among others) would have resonate for its universality and unboundedness.
While I have huge respect for the man, I also feel like I’m not his ideal audience. For instance, his philological references exposed me for the literary dilettante that I am. He could also come across as a bit too academic for my taste, and at times even tedious. I will not challenge its status as a classic, though. In fact, I truly enjoyed the quasi-logical extremes he went to in pursuit of intellectual entertainment, imaginative possibilities and hard won ah-ha moments.
*I liken this to the “total consciousness” that the Dalai Lama promised groundskeeper Karl Spackler in
Caddyshack.
Rating: really liked it
The peer pressure from my intellectually superior friends finally shamed me into reading this (as I had no Borges under my belt). Obviously from the 5 stars, I'm glad I caved in. This is a collection of 17 of his "best" short stories, held together merely by the thread that they are like nothing else you've ever read or even thought about.
Not every story is perfection, but all are surprising, irritating, challenging and somehow rewarding. Standouts are "Pierre Menard, Author of Don Quixote" - a man who dedicates much of his life to the recreation of Don Quixote word for word, a stunningly insightful satire. Also, "The Circular Ruins" which challenges the reality of religion and even self-awareness. "Funes, the Memorious" about a man cursed with perfect memory, and "The South", a somewhat autobiographical and deceptively simple narrative that is actually an experiment in structure.
Borges uses very direct, sparse but extremely detailed language. His characters are full baked from the beginning, so he wastes no time on development - it's all about the idea, the innovation, not the plot. If you read one of these tales out of context you might mistake it for a non-fictional essay, albeit with quirks.
Anyway, I'm recommending this to anyone who doesn't mind risking confusion and discomfort in the the pursuit of something truly unique and intellectually delicious.
