Ficciones

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The rule, clearly, for readers and especially collectors is to never lend a book that you expect to get back. In any case, the countries Borges described became entirely new territories for me, places I have never visited or could never visit. I could have used this advice several times over the course of my business career, when I sold pieces of my soul.

Leer a Borges requiere compromiso, atención y a veces paciencia porque el esmero con que construye los textos y la profundidad de la que los dota no son para tomarse a la ligera ni para comprenderse con una lectura superflua. While he imparts many of his own characteristics in them, he does not idealize them, and gives them human failings as well. I cannot imagine the universe without the interjection of Edgar Allan Poe“ --Pierre Menard, Author of Don Quixote. 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. 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.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. In 1961, he came to international attention when he received the first International Publishers' Prize Prix Formentor.

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. 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. He had smuggled the book under his coat and slid it into his bedside table at home along with tissues, crinkly likes leaves, condoms, mints, and other random tack that belonged nowhere else. They weren't the most heroic of characters perhaps but I have no illusions about my countrymen so I wasn't perturbed.I deeply lament having lent, irretrievably, the first book he published, to a female acquaintance” --The Work of Herbert Quain. 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]. Fortunately Borges, a man who Kerrigan says “has made the acquaintance of all religions… knows Madrid, Paris, and Geneva… [and] has read all the books,” seems to know his way around the block. Ficciones is a labyrinth, beautiful and witty, of ideas and feelings that mock and conquers the reader.

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). 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. He imagines someone his own age (I am younger than George), a professor of some sort (untrue), a man who reads books that George would never himself decide to read (probably true). These cookies help provide information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc.I had to read and reread sections of the story to make sure that I captured more of what Borges meant. 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. Yet minutely studied, Borges, like Kafka, under close scrutiny reveals subtle affinities with other forms of literature, exhibits an unmistakable existential angst. 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.

But the depth and detail of Funes’ memory makes it impossible for him to grasp general, abstract ideas. Or indeed the 'story' might not 'begin' at all leaving the narrative to continue in the mode of an essay. 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. But God works in mysterious ways, and the playwright is able to weave “a lofty invisible labyrinth in time. Tlön’s language resembles ours except that it does not contain any nouns, only “impersonal verbs qualified by monosyllabic suffixes or prefixes which have the force of adverbs.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 .