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Jorge Luis Borges

Has anyone ever read any Borges?

He's one of my favourite writers, and he's really easy to get into. He rarely wrote anything longer than about six pages, but he managed to get more ideas into his short stories than you'd find in the average novel.

There's the story of Funes, who has the curse of a perfect photographic memory; the story of the map whose precision and attention detail leads it to become as big as the land it depicts; or the infinite library which contains every possible book, with every possible combination of letters, books which make sense and those that don't - sounds like my bookshelf...

Each page of a Borges story progressively exposes more vertiginous depths; there's really no better writer to leave you with a dizzying sense of the possibilities of thought.

If you've not read him, I'd strongly recommend you investigate the alternate worlds of the Argentinian sage...
 
This is one writer that I have been very interested in reading. I have yet to try him out yet! Thanks for the recommendation. Your description of his writing adds much fuel to my urge to read!
 
Borges is so refreshingly original and imaginative to read. His wisdom and knowledge knows no boundaries! I've read several of his short stories (my favorite one is "The Other") and his poetry as well. You know when you've read him that you'll never read anything similar to it again, ever. And the way he draws parallels between writers such as Kafka and Kierkegaard is really quite interesting.

That he was never awarded a Nobel Prize for Literature is a blow to the prestige of the Nobel Committee.
 
As well as being a wonderful writer, he was also just about as well read as it's possible to manage in your lifetime.

It's a few years since I read his work; I went through about half a dozen collections of his short stories in about two or three weeks. In amongst all the wonderfully inventive ideas that he used, the one that has really stayed with me is a realitivly simple one. In the first of his books I read he tells the story of a knife fight in a bar; not in itself unusual. But as I read other collections of his work I would find a story which ended up with the main character back in the same bar retelling the fight from a different point of view. This re-telling happened a number of times in different stories, and I seem to remember that each time I failed to predict that it was going to end up back in that same bar.

KS
 
I should think that my feelings about Borges are self-evident. He's written some fantastic stories, often managing to capture the essence of something (say, the problem of memory) without being obtuse or dry.

In the first of his books I read he tells the story of a knife fight in a bar; not in itself unusual
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Do you mean the story of the Yardmaster? I happen to have a collection Borges' stories on tape, and the reading of the line "Imagine you bringing up Francisco Real that way . . . " just stays with me.
 
I must try more Borges. I've read a few of his collections - Labyrinths, The Aleph, The Book of Sand - but have never got much out of them. I invariably find them difficult to penetrate, and the descriptions of the stories in the blurb (eg Pierre Menard, author of The Quixote, "about a man who rewrites Don Quixote word for word") invariably are more interesting and engaging than the stories themselves. Perhaps he's one of those authors (as I discovered recently when Madame Bovary was catapulted into my top ten books ever ever list, having previously bored me stupid when I was younger) who is best read at a certain age, and I am not yet there, or - horror - already past?
 
Kenny Shovel said:
In the first of his books I read he tells the story of a knife fight in a bar; not in itself unusual. But as I read other collections of his work I would find a story which ended up with the main character back in the same bar retelling the fight from a different point of view. This re-telling happened a number of times in different stories, and I seem to remember that each time I failed to predict that it was going to end up back in that same bar.
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I take it the initial story you were thinking of was "The End". I haven't read all his work, so I haven't noticed other references to it. That story, however, is supposed to be a retelling of the end of José Hernández' "Martín Fierro", a text Argentine readers apparently are very familiar with.
Even if Andrew Hurley's "Borges - Collected Fictions" translations have been much maligned, I've found the notes on each story to be great for pointing out facts like this, which I'd probably never get otherwise.

Borges is someone I've only read relatively recently. Somehow I went years without knowing of him, but thanks to a good friend's advice, picked up a Penguin collection titled "Labyrinths"* from the library four or so years ago and had a whole new world of wonder open up for me. I'm sure most Borges fans had a similar reaction on first reading him. These compact, rich tales of infinity, permutations, the world, literature, the soul and life. Just reading one story can result in hours of contemplation of the little and the big.
No other author has hit my, ah, "sweet spot" quite in the same manner, as it was like finally finding what I'd always, unknowingly, been looking for in literature.

There are few authors I have such a craving for reading over and over and exploring new translations of. Perhaps some day I'll even experience the texts in Borges' own form. That'll be some ways off though, my first step is getting to the point where I can read the German greats in their own words!

*I must admit that I did not read the essays the collection also included. Some day...
 
Shade said:
Perhaps he's one of those authors ... who is best read at a certain age, and I am not yet there, or - horror - already past?
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Shade,
From the descriptions of his style by the others here, I know I must have tried him. From your description I now know why I put him aside. I must not have tried at that magic age either. Talk about delayed fulfillment of pleasure! I was ready to tear the book apart to get at the point of the story I tried. But, as you say, maybe another time. :(
Peder
 
As good as Borges is, I think that some stories make better introductions to him than others. I would not suggest starting out with Pierre Menard or some of the other more esoteric stories. Perhaps something like The Aleph or The Zahir would be better starting points. I think that because both stories are begin from very human and understandable circumstances, they are apt to be less off-putting.
 
Borges

czgibson said:
Has anyone ever read any Borges?
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I've read a few Borges books 'Labyrinths' and 'Fictions' - and really enjoyed them - I also like Italo Calvino who writes similar stuff.

Have you read any of his.

Mark
 
just one of his phrases

he said once: Not granting me the Nobel Prize has become a scandinavian tradition; since i was born -August 24, 1899- they have not been granting it to me....
sharp and humorous.. it reflects how he wrote and did.. i agree in your concepts about him...

Morty said:
Borges is so refreshingly original and imaginative to read. His wisdom and knowledge knows no boundaries! I've read several of his short stories (my favorite one is "The Other") and his poetry as well. You know when you've read him that you'll never read anything similar to it again, ever. And the way he draws parallels between writers such as Kafka and Kierkegaard is really quite interesting.

That he was never awarded a Nobel Prize for Literature is a blow to the prestige of the Nobel Committee.
Click to expand...
 
Shade said:
I must try more Borges. I've read a few of his collections - Labyrinths, The Aleph, The Book of Sand - but have never got much out of them. I invariably find them difficult to penetrate, and the descriptions of the stories in the blurb (eg Pierre Menard, author of The Quixote, "about a man who rewrites Don Quixote word for word") invariably are more interesting and engaging than the stories themselves. Perhaps he's one of those authors (as I discovered recently when Madame Bovary was catapulted into my top ten books ever ever list, having previously bored me stupid when I was younger) who is best read at a certain age, and I am not yet there, or - horror - already past?
Click to expand...

I thought 'Labyrinths' was excellent.
 
I'm with Shade. The astual working out of the intellectual concepts for his stories always seems to not live up to their anticipation. And, to my ear, they sound like amateur attemps at reworking old mathematical concepts (mazes, random walks, countability, self-referential statements, for a few)
But many say they are great. So WDIK?
 
True, but I find working out the puzzle a satisfying thing. And I love a maze. I try to read them not so much as psychological pieces, but rather as intellectual works.
 
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