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4.32 AVERAGE
4.32 AVERAGE
There's no denying Borges' imagination and intelligence, but his interests are not my interests. His subjects are (at least in this collection) primarily Gnosticism, heretical Christian sects, paradoxes, philosophy, and the possibility of a multiverse. I did find a couple of the stories to be engaging (The Garden of Forking Paths and The Library of Babel are justifiably famous) but most of the book is as dry as a desert wind.
Maybe you can have too much of a good thing. That’s what I’m going to put this down to. I loved The Aleph, my first foray into Borges which I immersed myself in and thoroughly enjoyed. I found Labyrinths though much harder to enjoy, even though it has been translated, so lost was I that I felt that I may as well have been reading it in Borges native Argentinian.
The fictions, for the most part I enjoyed, particularly The Garden of Forking Paths, the Lottery in Babylon, The Shape of the Sword, Death and the Compass and the Secret Miracle. What I hadn’t realised as I reached The Immortal is that the second half of the fictions in Labyrinths are all in The Aleph. After skipping them I moved onto the Essays, and here I fell down completely.
I said in my review of the Aleph that I thought maybe I wasn’t a good enough reader for Borges, and his essays here confirmed that, or it could be that I just don’t have any interest in the points and theories that Borges wanted to expound, even if I did, I would have struggled to follow the thrust of his arguments and discussions.
After the Essays, again the parables were all in the Aleph, so all that was left was the Elegy, which was a poignant finish to the collection.
(blog review here)
The fictions, for the most part I enjoyed, particularly The Garden of Forking Paths, the Lottery in Babylon, The Shape of the Sword, Death and the Compass and the Secret Miracle. What I hadn’t realised as I reached The Immortal is that the second half of the fictions in Labyrinths are all in The Aleph. After skipping them I moved onto the Essays, and here I fell down completely.
I said in my review of the Aleph that I thought maybe I wasn’t a good enough reader for Borges, and his essays here confirmed that, or it could be that I just don’t have any interest in the points and theories that Borges wanted to expound, even if I did, I would have struggled to follow the thrust of his arguments and discussions.
After the Essays, again the parables were all in the Aleph, so all that was left was the Elegy, which was a poignant finish to the collection.
(blog review here)
emotional
lighthearted
mysterious
reflective
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
N/A
Intriguing short stories on dreams, infinity, philosophy, reality, and mysticism. Would recommend.
Borges and I
The other one, the one called Borges, is the one things happen to. I walk through the streets of Buenos Aires and stop for a moment, perhaps mechanically now, to look at the arch of an entrance hall and the grillwork on the gate; I know of Borges from the mail and see his name on a list of professors or in a biographical dictionary. I like hourglasses, maps, eighteenth-century typography, the taste of coffee and the prose of Stevenson; he shares these preferences, but in a vain way that turns them into the attributes of an actor. It would be an exaggeration to say that ours is a hostile relationship; I live, let myself go on living, so that Borges may contrive his literature, and this literature justifies me. It is no effort for me to confess that he has achieved some valid pages, but those pages cannot save me, perhaps because what is good belongs to no one, not even to him, but rather to the language and to tradition. Besides, I am destined to perish, definitively, and only some instant of myself can survive in him. Little by little, I am giving over everything to him, though I am quite aware of his perverse custom of falsifying and magnifying things.
Spinoza knew that all things long to persist in their being; the stone eternally wants to be a stone and the tiger a tiger. I shall remain in Borges, not in myself (if it is true that I am someone), but I recognize myself less in his books than in many others or in the laborious strumming of a guitar. Years ago I tried to free myself from him and went from the mythologies of the suburbs to the games with time and infinity, but those games belong to Borges now and I shall have to imagine other things. Thus my life is a flight and I lose everything and everything belongs to oblivion, or to him.
I do not know which of us has written this page.
The other one, the one called Borges, is the one things happen to. I walk through the streets of Buenos Aires and stop for a moment, perhaps mechanically now, to look at the arch of an entrance hall and the grillwork on the gate; I know of Borges from the mail and see his name on a list of professors or in a biographical dictionary. I like hourglasses, maps, eighteenth-century typography, the taste of coffee and the prose of Stevenson; he shares these preferences, but in a vain way that turns them into the attributes of an actor. It would be an exaggeration to say that ours is a hostile relationship; I live, let myself go on living, so that Borges may contrive his literature, and this literature justifies me. It is no effort for me to confess that he has achieved some valid pages, but those pages cannot save me, perhaps because what is good belongs to no one, not even to him, but rather to the language and to tradition. Besides, I am destined to perish, definitively, and only some instant of myself can survive in him. Little by little, I am giving over everything to him, though I am quite aware of his perverse custom of falsifying and magnifying things.
Spinoza knew that all things long to persist in their being; the stone eternally wants to be a stone and the tiger a tiger. I shall remain in Borges, not in myself (if it is true that I am someone), but I recognize myself less in his books than in many others or in the laborious strumming of a guitar. Years ago I tried to free myself from him and went from the mythologies of the suburbs to the games with time and infinity, but those games belong to Borges now and I shall have to imagine other things. Thus my life is a flight and I lose everything and everything belongs to oblivion, or to him.
I do not know which of us has written this page.
"Music, states of happiness, mythology, faces belabored by time, certain twilights and certain places try to tell us something, or have said something we should not have missed, or are about to say something; this imminence of a revelation which does not occur is, perhaps, the aesthetic phenomenon."
I picked this up a couple years ago, read two or three stories, then relegated it to my bookshelf. On this second encounter I'm much more impressed. I came with the wrong mindset before; you can’t expect a great deal of plot or characterization from Borges, but you will find fascinating ideas and elegant, sometimes haunting prose.
My favorite entry is “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius,” which explores a society that has internalized idealist philosophy (the belief that the external world does not exist independently of minds). I’m fascinated by Berkeyelan idealism, so it was fun to find it as a recurring theme in this collection.
The implications of possible and actual infinities are another recurring theme. The famous story “The Library of Babel” considers what you might find in a library whose books contained all possible permutations of letters; hidden amongst the gibberish there could be, for example, "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.”
I picked this up a couple years ago, read two or three stories, then relegated it to my bookshelf. On this second encounter I'm much more impressed. I came with the wrong mindset before; you can’t expect a great deal of plot or characterization from Borges, but you will find fascinating ideas and elegant, sometimes haunting prose.
My favorite entry is “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius,” which explores a society that has internalized idealist philosophy (the belief that the external world does not exist independently of minds). I’m fascinated by Berkeyelan idealism, so it was fun to find it as a recurring theme in this collection.
The implications of possible and actual infinities are another recurring theme. The famous story “The Library of Babel” considers what you might find in a library whose books contained all possible permutations of letters; hidden amongst the gibberish there could be, for example, "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.”
borges is borges is borges.
contains one of my favorite short stories: "A New Refutation of Time"
contains one of my favorite short stories: "A New Refutation of Time"
adventurous
challenging
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
N/A
Strong character development:
N/A
Loveable characters:
N/A
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
N/A
The amount of wider reading I’d have to do to understand this book is insane
Borrowing from Evan.
For this one I'm keeping a lot of status updates, because I know I will not remember all of these little pieces by the end of the book.
I finished the fiction, finally. I read the majority of them in a row, like a regular book, which I think was a mistake for me. I'm going to read the rest of the book slowly over an even longer set of time.
And yes, I'm taking a break from this to start Anna Karenina. Time for a little light reading.
For this one I'm keeping a lot of status updates, because I know I will not remember all of these little pieces by the end of the book.
I finished the fiction, finally. I read the majority of them in a row, like a regular book, which I think was a mistake for me. I'm going to read the rest of the book slowly over an even longer set of time.
And yes, I'm taking a break from this to start Anna Karenina. Time for a little light reading.