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🦋 Borges the storyteller (part III of...)
The anniversary of Borges' death just passed -- got me thinking of a couple of things, principally that I should get back to my translation of Réquiem by Slavko Zupcic (in which Zupcic "accidentally" kills Borges); and also about which Borges fictions would be the best ones to start out with for a new reader. (This thanks to a Facebook post of Matt Dickerson's, in which he suggested "The Library of Babel" as a starting point.)I was thinking there might be a good argument for starting off with any of:
- "Tlön, Ukbar, Orbis Tertius" -- Donald Taylor mentioned in that thread that he had not yet read the story of "The Library of Babel" but he appreciated the puzzle of it -- I think Tlön and Babel and the other stories in Garden of Forking Paths (part I of Ficciones) are a great starting point if you are primarily interested (or even "strongly interested") in the intellectual-puzzles aspect of Borges' work.
- "Funes, His Memory" -- this was the first thing I thought of, because I had read it quite recently and been really taken with the quality of Borges' voice and of his narrative. This is the first story in Artifices, which is part II of Ficciones and postdates part I by three years. Drawing of character is much stronger here than in any of his earlier stories.
- "The Immortal" -- This is the first story in The Aleph, published 5 years after Ficciones. A wonderful, wonderful story and a good introduction to the role of time and of infinity in Borges' fictions.
In the end I would probably go with "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" just because having it be one's first taste of Borges seems like a sort of canonical experience among people I know who like his work. But probably would suggest that my interlocutor skip ahead to some later work next instead of reading straight through The Garden of Forking Paths. Certainly I would recommend either starting with the translations in Collected Fictions or with those in Labyrinths.
 (Of course I am hoping the person I am recommending these stories to will feel moved to read much more of his work -- these three stories seem sort of like good vehicles for figuring out if you are interested in reading more, I don't by any means think that these three stories in isolation would be particularly enlightening.)
posted evening of Tuesday, June 15th, 2010
➳ More posts about Ficciones
➳ More posts about Short Stories
➳ More posts about Jorge Luis Borges
➳ More posts about Readings
➳ More posts about The Aleph
➳ More posts about Slavko Zupcic
➳ More posts about The Immortal
Borges was killed in fiction? Horrors! I'd love to read that.
I appreciate that you were able to narrow down the good Borges starters, Jeremy. I've already read them and would certainly consider your selection of them when I reread them. I also love Borges's short-shorts in Dreamtigers.
posted evening of June 15th, 2010 by Rise
Dreamtigers is indeed great (as is The Maker), I feel like I haven't really read either of those books though as they both mix poetry with short fiction and I've only read the fiction. Have you taken a look at A Universal History of Infamy? It is his first collection of fiction, short-short pieces about historical episodes, extremely weird.
posted evening of June 15th, 2010 by Jeremy
I haven’t taken a look at The Universal History but a copy is on its way. I’m curious as to how Borges appropriated the so-called encyclopedia/archival fiction. I saw a cover using the word iniquity in place of infamy. Both infamous words, so the book must really about unorthodoxy. :)
posted evening of June 15th, 2010 by Rise
Norman Thomas di Giovanni rendered Infamia as Infamy, Hurley as Iniquity -- I read di Giovanni's translation first so that's how I usually refer to it.
posted morning of June 16th, 2010 by Jeremy
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