Borges Collected Fictions

I've been reading some of these short stories named 'Funes, His Memory', 'The Widow Ching-Pirate' ,and some I don't remember the title. Something must be eluding because I do not see the relevance of these stories. I do enjoy them but I do cannot come up with Borges is trying to convey. They just seem like old tales. They are captivating to say the least and the environments seem like as if he lived it.

I have read some critiques of the works but what I've read from these critiques I would never have came up with on my own. Again probably due to my lack of exposure to Borges.

I wrote a post on my blog about Borges' Ficciones. Maybe that will help you: Link.

Borges works with different layers of interpretation, you are living just the first layer, and yes, the lack of exposure to Borges may be helping, but he is more like a big mirror reflecting all(Most) literature before him. Which includes philosophy (Key factor for Funes).
The Widow is a bit different, it was a serie of stories Borges wrote before he was Borges. He was playing with the reality and fiction part,but he had not discovered the key yet.
But if you got that they are like old stories and yet, like places where he lived, you are starting very well.

Reading Drkshadow blog, I must say that you two must understand Borges is metaphysical writer, he works with concepts and not traditional sense of narrative and plot. When he does that, he is hiding something. His main character is always Literature. But nobody needs or have to understand him. Plus, he have a great sense of humor. He is always writing with a smile on his lips, so watch out.

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Originally Posted by Ohmyscience

I've been reading some of these short stories named 'Funes, His Memory', 'The Widow Ching-Pirate' ,and some I don't remember the title. Something must be eluding because I do not see the relevance of these stories. I do enjoy them but I do cannot come up with Borges is trying to convey. They just seem like old tales. They are captivating to say the least and the environments seem like as if he lived it.

I have read some critiques of the works but what I've read from these critiques I would never have came up with on my own. Again probably due to my lack of exposure to Borges.

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I enjoyed reading Ficciones, but Borges is a thematic writer, he writes almost entirely from his head, not his heart. I think he was a genius, but he's too cold and distant for me, much like Umberto Eco. I greatly prefer the English and Russian classics, which are a combination of head and heart.

Everyone has his or her own cup of tea, of course, which is very, very good.

Edit - I think it was a terrific review as well! :) Thoroughly enjoyed reading it.

I just started Ficciones and I am really enjoying his writing style and his ideas. That was a great review, by the way, Drkshadow, it made things more clear once I started reading the book, which I did shortly after reading this thread.

Very informative ook at Borges. Thanks Drkshadow. Any more essays or critiques of his work? Who are his predecessors and inspirations?

Hey for any fans, check out this documentary on J.L. Borges on youtube, it may answer questions:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVCAj...eature=related

Sorry, but I think DkS text is only informative about his impressions about the experience of reading borges, about Borges, himself it is lacking. (And I do not think it is relevant for his purpose anyways)...

Umberto Eco is fanatical about Borges (consider him and Joyce the two main writers of XX century) so he do have good essays. Italo Calvino final book: Six Proposals is in the end a form to say that we should write like Borges.
I would suggest the group where I post in goodreads (but unsure about this forum rules about posting links and a bit too lazy to check them out, I would wait until someone tell me it is ok). There is a thread there about him (with some links) and also for the story Garden of Forking Paths. Borges is also the best man to talk about Borges. Adolfo Bioy Casares have a register of the meeting between both. Norman Thomas Giovanni organized a serie of interview. Many can be found around the web.

Predecessors of Borges? The most famous were Poe, Robert Louis Stevenson, Coleridge, Walt Whitman, Faulkner, James Joyce, Berkley, Kieerkergard, Schopenhauer, Dante, Chesterton, H.G.Wells, Kafka, 1001 Nights, Medieval Germanic poetry, Thomas Carlyle, Edward Gibbon, Voltaire, Doctor Johnson, Browning, Conrad, Macedonio Fernandez,Zeno, Heraclito, The local poetry gaucha...
He also translatated or wrote essays about almost everyone, Pascal, Plato, Flaubert, Nietzche, Homer (mostly about his translators), the bible and gnostic texts, Keats, George Bernard Shaw, Virginia Woolf, Ruben Dario, Melville, Shakespeare... watever... He showed a great link with guys like Eliot, Ezra Pound (knew the work of both, but never worked alongside them), Fernando Pessoa... Worked alongside Adolfo Bioy Casares, Ernesto Sabato, Silvina Ocampo and Julio Cortazar... Was a huge rival of Pablo Neruda. Oh, well, the guy is the archetype of erudite bookworm, if one can image such, and even more because he was blind. As critic he was never prone to building rules and such, but influential nevertheless. Teacher of english literature. Virtual father of the boom of latin america literature in the XX century. Writer for Writers.

I must agree with JCamilo... to criticize J.L. Borges for his lack of rich character development is to completely miss the point. It is akin to dismissing Monet for focusing upon landscapes or Picasso due to his lack of "realism". Borges, like Kafka (perhaps his nearest predecessor) were both writers that did not immediately grab me. Indeed, they initially were almost disappointing. This, I must admit, was because I came to them with some preconceived notion as to what they were... and yet I wasn't at all expecting their dead-pan style. Yet both of these writers continued to attract me. Something about them kept gnawing at me and I kept returning to them again and again until I was completely obsessed.

Borges, like Kafka, is a master humorist... playing with ideas taken to their logical albeit absurd conclusion... and reduced to but a few short pages and the most lucid prose. Yes, he is an unrepentant bookworm and admits as much, declaring, "Few things have happened to me, and I have read a great many. Or rather, few things have happened to me more worth remembering than Schopenhauer's thought and the music of England's words." Borges draws his characters from the whole of literature: Shakespeare, Cervantes, Don Quixote, Homer, the Arabian Knights, the Gnostics, Sherlock Holmes, Dante, Browning, St. Thomas Aquinas, Quevedo, Poe, Neruda, Robert Burton, the unknown writer of the first sonnet, St. Matthew, etc...

Borges is not interested in character development or in building up a rich tapestry of details and atmosphere. He is absolutely enamored with story telling... with the magic of literature and story-telling... with constructing narratives from the most unlikely sources taken to the must unexpected conclusions. Borges may be the absolute master of blurring genres in literature: poetry, the short story, the detective tale, science fiction, philosophy, history, essay, journal, aphorisms, criticism, etc... are all interwoven and torn asunder. Borges most immediate predecessors can be found among those authors most intrigued with bending and blurring narrative genre and compiling layer upon layer within their fictions. The Arabian Nights, Cervantes, Swift's A Modest Proposal, Brown's Anatomy of Melancholia, Pessoa, Kafka, Poe, and Lewis Carroll would be counted among his most obvious predecessors.

Borges... along with his rival, the poet Pablo Neruda, is virtually the father of modern Latin-American literature. Julio Cortazar, Alejo Carpentier, Gabriel Garcia-Marquez, Carlos Fuentes, Augusto Monterosso, etc... are all clearly indebted to him. Beyond the confines of Latin-America, writers such as Jose Saramago, Tomasso Landolfi, Italo Calvino, Thomas Pynchon, John Barthes, Donald Barthleme, etc... also follow in his wake. I would have no qualms about placing Borges among the 10... even 5 most important writers of the past century. He is certainly worth further effort:

http://www.themodernword.com/borges/index.html

Yeah, I must say (and it is a borgesian way) that I forgot to list some obvious influences: Cervantes, Lugones, Quevedo and his relation with Nabokov (and vice-versa, once Nabokov said they shared an empathic link, because they never talked and yet had the same ideas)...
but Stukles, saying he is the father of latin american literature is a bit unfair, he had no links with brazilian literature and before him Horacio Quiroga, Ruben Dario, Ricardo Guiralles, Martin Fierro.... well, stuff that are also a part of Borges already existed. He is just the guy who opened the path for a huge international reckonigtion.

Funny, I was hooked by Borges since the first time. It was later, I was already familiar with Chesterton, Stevenson, Kafka and also with some of his "sons" like Calvino, Eco and Neil Gaiman, so It was like I was reading Borges already (since he is some short of Alleph of Literature)... The big thing was that I was not very found of spanish-american literature, so I avoided them (an occasional Neruda was all that I allowed me to read) and of course, after him, everything was rather welcoming. And it was History of Eternity, by chance, time was a topic of a friendly discussion a few days before, I was also seeking critical reference for a university work about the oral-written duality on stories and an argie friend in a football forum was talking about Borges and fantasy...

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Originally Posted by stlukesguild

I must agree with JCamilo... to criticize J.L. Borges for his lack of rich character development is to completely miss the point. It is akin to dismissing Monet for focusing upon landscapes or Picasso due to his lack of "realism".

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StLuke and JCamillo: That's not exactly what I said or what I meant anyway. There is a difference between saying "Picasso is terrible because he doesn't paint 'realism' " versus saying, "I personally prefer paintings with realistic subjects, so while I understand what Picasso is doing he will never be a favorite painter of mine." I think the latter was more of what I was getting at.

Quoting my review: "People who live for wordplay will love Borges; people who love strong characters that they can relate to and feel an emotional connection with I suspect will find him wanting." - I merely described here what sort of reader I think would enjoy the work, keeping in mind that this is a review. I think this is a fairly neutral and mostly accurate statement.

"The lack of well-defined central characters in many of these stories was the collection’s biggest weakness; the stories were often missing that crucial human element that strong central characters provide." - This is the only statement that really sounds like I am criticizing him, actually calling his lack of developed characters a deficiency outside of the context of my own personal reactions. The only spot! I admit it was a little sloppy in wording since that wasn't my intent for it to come off that way.

"Word games get trite and annoying after awhile. Ideas are a dime-a-dozen without strong characters to explore them. The interesting metaphysics act as most of these stories’ saving grace." - This line too I suppose might be seen as criticizing him, but it is situated within comments that clearly signify this is my personal reaction.

"A writer with the ability to bring a tear to my eye and get me choked up will win every single time over a writer who simply writes beautiful language and causes me to ponder a few deep ideas after the close of the book. This is why Jorge Luis Borges will never be a Philip Roth or a Harlan Ellison for me, both of whom have written stories that have left me on the verge of tears with the sheer force of their emotional power. I realize that isn’t the kind of story Borges intended to write and respect that to a certain degree, but ultimately there is something crucial missing for me in these stories." - Again, this is the final line and frames the whole review. I explain that I get what Borges is trying to do, but I prefer work with strong characters.

I think when read overall it is clear that I am saying, "I personally prefer paintings with realistic subjects, so while I understand what Picasso is doing he will never be a favorite painter." So I'm not sure I missed the point at all actually. Instead I am giving my personal subjective reaction to the work, which I personally think should be a part of any review.

In fact, JCamillo gets quite well what I was going for:

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but I think DkS text is only informative about his impressions about the experience of reading borges

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Still, when JCamillo writes:

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Reading Drkshadow blog, I must say that you two must understand Borges is metaphysical writer, he works with concepts and not traditional sense of narrative and plot.

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It completely ignores that I did address that in the review:

"One might appeal to Borges’s thematic concerns as the primary driving force to read these stories. In “Babel,” librarians go mad with their inability to organize the endless rows of books; a remark that could be taken as a statement that knowledge and truth always defies human capabilities to discover it fully. We see here that Borges’s metaphysical concerns are in the patrimony of existentialism and postmodernist philosophy; this subjectivity-oriented metaphysics––perpetually suspicious of objectivity and ultimate truth-–-lends itself to the puzzle-like construction of these “detective” stories where the reader can do nothing more than piece together a small piece of reality that never fully conveys the full truth."

"The interesting metaphysics act as most of these stories’ saving grace."

I would love to re-read it at some point and write up some deeper thoughts about each story, plus I would like to see if any of my impression change, hence why I nominated it for the Book Club: Link

Drkshadow, critics are not only pointing flaws. Do not understand as such, because I do not understand as such...
I could address to specific points but since I understood yourself consider the experience with borges not enough yet, I considered that you could change the opinion. Hence for example I do not point Borges is not exactly a wordplayer...

Anyways, I noticed you mention the metaphysics, but In my opinion you didnt read him from this point of view, you reckonized his use of it. Hence, I think you could still understand his work from the metaphysical point of view... As I said, I only think your blog is not exactly very informative about Borges himself, only about your relation with him and the other posters could have that in mind, which does not undermine the vallue of your experience.

Drkshadow, I only countered your blog because I wished to give an alternative view of Borges considering the several apparently negative comments and the original poster's doubts. I fully agree that Borges is not a master of character development and if this is this is an aspect of reading that you find essential, Borges will certainly be wanting. I agree with your analogy on Picasso. For all Picasso's innovation and sheer inventiveness, he never moves me as Rembrandt can... he never conveys a lush sensuality like Titian, Rubens, Ingres, or Bonnard. Borges, in a like manner, lacks the lush sensuality of Proust, the character development of Shakespeare and the ability to move me emotionally like any number of other artists. In this sense I have no qualms with your criticism. However, Borges is a marvelous writer and I do feel that it is only fair to offer a more in-depth criticism of his stronger points. Comments such as "People who live for wordplay will love Borges..." and "Word games get trite and annoying after awhile." seemingly reduce Borges to nothing more than a writer of mental masturbation, and I think there is far more to him than that. Of course as a self-proclaimed Borgesian, I cannot but be expected to jump at any perceived slight of this master.:D Probably like any number of other Lit-Netters if anyone were to so much as suggest that Dostoevsky was not all that.:lol:

But the truth is that he is not that great word player (he could be, but he is not) such as Lewis Carroll or Kafka. Borges is more like an structure player. He word usage is quite simple, his translators always pointed the difficulty is finding the concept, not the word. He was actually very critical of moderm poetry and prose when they are crypitographic just for the sake of it. He liked it, but only as a game, not as literature.
(Obviously, he used words that most people need to know the significance, but it is more of how and where the words are placed, the sentence)...
anyways, yes, the comments are towards some comments that are simplification... fair enough, but with all fairness, not enough.

What I think Drkshadow is breaching upon is the direct contrast between someone like Chekhov-Mansfield-Munro, who write short stories based around characters, verses something like Kafka-Borges-Calvino, who are more interested in allegory and concept, and also setting, over character. They are very different styles, but I don't think it is safe to say one is stronger than the other. Personally, I think I sit with the second group, though I don't have a particularly strong liking for Kafka as a writer (Calvino being probably my favorite short writer, seconded by Mansfield), but generally they are just two styles.

So in a sense, one must agree with Drkshadow, that those looking for intense character investigation within their short stories, and looking for their characters to have epiphanies and what not probably will not be as taken with Borges as with James Joyce's Dubliners. On another level though, that doesn't really say anything about Borges - Borges is still Borges, and his style is still dominant and fantastic - it merely says something about the way fiction has divided and developed, and how things push towards other directions.

In a sense, one could argue that this goes back to the fundamental difference between comedy and tragedy. In Tragedy, the characters are over developed, and their psychology seems almost more than human, and more than real. I think perhaps Chekhov comes the closest, and one would argue the bulk of his stories tend toward the tragic. On the other side, one could say that Marco Polo in Calvino's Ctità Invisibili (Invisible Cities), to use a more concrete example, is a comic genius, playing off the concept of women as compared to cities, and that they are each different and beautiful, yet all the same (I don't think it is hard to miss that every city happens to have a female name, and the features tend toward physical descriptions at times). Of course, the characters there are reduced to mere caricatures, and made less than human, as to be more comical.

I don't think that's too much of a stretch to argue. Perhaps Aristotle is still the most valid critic of literature.

Should I approach this anthology in any order or should I just go cover to cover? Having read the opinions on this thread I will approach Borges with some more inquisitiveness. JCamillo, indeed I found him very readable. I have no problem retaining my attention as the prose is so fluid and unassuming.

Maybe its just me but these stories seem very distant from each other. Is there a certain Borges ness that holds them together other than authorship? And if so please enlighten.

The certain Borges ness is the man himself, Octavio Paz once said, which is also true for many others, "Borges is his work"...

He had a strong aversion to long texts, so he never build one, unless we talk about his autobiography and a few critical essays (Borges is a very good critic, because he retain his aesthetical approach while writing and teaching, to the point that his "fictions" are nothing but illustrations of his own vision about art and literature). You will notice he re-tells a few stories (sometimes two inside one), later in life he did it a lot, somehow to reflect his destachment to the world (Borges went progressivelly blind and also, affllicted by some short of desapointment with the world who didnt understood his vision to justify anything in name of aesthetical creation). I gave an example, In Library of Babel there is the suggestion that the entire library could be replaced by a single book, this single book is the book that the inner story of Garden of Forking Paths presents. Or Funes's memory and the Zahir and The Alleph...

A side note, Borges was related to a few modernist groups, but he never took it too seriously, because he always saw himself as a pre-modernist writer (A man of XIX century) and he was too ironic to accept any label. His first steady work was as critic, prefaces and essays. Then he discovered a way to replace romances and novels for short stories, with Almostasin. And he never left that, a master miniaturist, in fact, with Chekhov the best argument about short stories relevance. Nobody debunke those two and they are leveled with the long novels and romance writers.

But I think in the end, you will see that (while pleasure still high), reading Borges is akim to studying because the gaps between the stories are the necessary references. You end hearing about a hundred writers, several minor works, different perspectives and they build up his work, because Borges was able to do very original interpretative analogies and also, expand traditional interpretations of some well know stories.

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Originally Posted by JBI

What I think Drkshadow is breaching upon is the direct contrast between someone like Chekhov-Mansfield-Munro, who write short stories based around characters, verses something like Kafka-Borges-Calvino, who are more interested in allegory and concept, and also setting, over character. They are very different styles, but I don't think it is safe to say one is stronger than the other. Personally, I think I sit with the second group, though I don't have a particularly strong liking for Kafka as a writer (Calvino being probably my favorite short writer, seconded by Mansfield), but generally they are just two styles.

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Yes, I think Drkshadow was just unhappy when he says "weakness", I understood as he saying that was a weakness for those who reading and not an weakness of Borges himself, but it was not something very clear.

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In a sense, one could argue that this goes back to the fundamental difference between comedy and tragedy. In Tragedy, the characters are over developed, and their psychology seems almost more than human, and more than real. I think perhaps Chekhov comes the closest, and one would argue the bulk of his stories tend toward the tragic. On the other side, one could say that Marco Polo in Calvino's Ctità Invisibili (Invisible Cities), to use a more concrete example, is a comic genius, playing off the concept of women as compared to cities, and that they are each different and beautiful, yet all the same (I don't think it is hard to miss that every city happens to have a female name, and the features tend toward physical descriptions at times). Of course, the characters there are reduced to mere caricatures, and made less than human, as to be more comical.

I don't think that's too much of a stretch to argue. Perhaps Aristotle is still the most valid critic of literature.

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I do not know if the Comedy/tragedy duality could be applied so easily to both. I do not see as a tragedy theme the birth of puppies while guys like Calvino, Kafka or Borges seems to be, while not exactly faithful, seeking divine concepts. Obviously, it would not be easy, they are not greek after all. Fact is, I think those guys I would compare more with the traditional oral forms like Parables and Fables. (Except they use no moral), exactly because the allegorical potential of such works, how they can be always interpreted under a new light, and how they always worked with simple and economic language - this is obviously with Kafka, due his jewish heritage.

But one thing that amaze me is that the Borges and Chekhov are very alike with their concepts of how to write a short story. (In the end, both have something with Poe, but anyways), and Borges, the guy who was supposed to know it all, do not mention Chekhov. He was not specially found of russian literature, specially while compared with british literature. But considering what was their craft and I found very doubtful Borges didn't knew Chekhov (Borges seems very found of Dostoievisky, even if claiming to be unable to read his entire books, so he was not obvious to the russian literature)... After a considerable amount of reading of Borges I can not remember a single reference. Of course, Chekhov is the intelectual who leaves his tower, works from the proximity with people, while borges kept the distance (perhaps a good way to show the difference of what is romantic and what is classic, if one would use both a two different yet universal paradigms of art) but it is too strange. Then I remember how much Borges liked to say that in the Koran the word camel never appears, because it was too obvious to mentioned... Of course, using Borges to justify Borges is never too wise, the guy liked to play. (And I think Chekhov had a lot of sense of humor too, he also was under Gogol's coat)

*applauds from the sidelines*

finally a substantive thread in this forum that has "literature" in its title.

The "Do You Get Bored with..?" and "Do you no longer read long novels?"
threads get pretty tiresome

(yes, I understand there is an option to NOT READ them...but see, I must because philistenes need to be eliminated, muu ha ha ha:crash:)

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You must admit though, even in the bleakest of stories by Kafka and Borges, there is always a strong vein of savage comedy. I suspect this sort of thinking has its roots in Byron, or perhaps Moliere's Don Juan or something, but the thread of savage comedy seems to have overtaken much of the mainstream in fiction by the Victorian period, and then become perhaps a little darker, and more comical by the time you get Kafka. I think one, when reading the Book of Sand, for instance, is supposed to laugh, or at laugh at the helplessness of the reader within the book of sand. Likewise, in the Aleph, one is supposed to laugh at Daneri, also known as Neruda. In truth, I can't really think of any tragedy stories by Borges - the closest he comes are perhaps the stories ending in complete despair at the helplessness of the author, but even those are more comical than tragic.


Compare that to something like Chekhov's "The Kiss", and there is a huge, beyond measurable difference. The closest I think Chekhov would come to being like Borges, would be in "The Bet", but even that is tinged with Chekhov's tragic melodrama.

Of course, this isn't a general rule, but I see the two as completely apart, and purposely so. Realism is very different I guess, than magical realism in the Borges/Calvino sense, when you deal with character. Chekhov tries to capture human misery at the moment it is most profound, whereas Borges tries to laugh at human misery and helplessness.

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Originally Posted by JBI

You must admit though, even in the bleakest of stories by Kafka and Borges, there is always a strong vein of savage comedy.

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I am the first to admit it. Kafka is hilarious. Borges is a "bromeiro"

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I suspect this sort of thinking has its roots in Byron, or perhaps Moliere's Don Juan or something, but the thread of savage comedy seems to have overtaken much of the mainstream in fiction by the Victorian period, and then become perhaps a little darker, and more comical by the time you get Kafka. I think one, when reading the Book of Sand, for instance, is supposed to laugh, or at laugh at the helplessness of the reader within the book of sand. Likewise, in the Aleph, one is supposed to laugh at Daneri, also known as Neruda. In truth, I can't really think of any tragedy stories by Borges - the closest he comes are perhaps the stories ending in complete despair at the helplessness of the author, but even those are more comical than tragic.

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Borges liked Byron, but I think his humor belongs to the irony lineage: Lucan, Swift, Voltaire, Oscar Wilde, etc. Philosophy mixed with storytelling. He always bring up some upper intelectual reference and at sametime, distance from the subjects...
Kafka I think it is easier. Jewish traditional parables (Which by the way, is also part of Borges heritage) are very humorous. They have a big traditions of anedoctes. Mixed with their capacity for allegories and the bleakness from the XIX century end, we have Kafka.
I think neither are tragic indeed. They are too skeptical, for the tragic it is necessary some belief, either in the destiny or in the capacity to overcome it (or just the possibility). For both of them this didn't made any sense. Kafka is not even conclusive to allow any possibility to have a "destiny" and Borges is all about all possibilties...

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Compare that to something like Chekhov's "The Kiss", and there is a huge, beyond measurable difference. The closest I think Chekhov would come to being like Borges, would be in "The Bet", but even that is tinged with Chekhov's tragic melodrama.

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Yeah, Chekhov is tragic. He is a good guy, in any sense of the world, really touched by the troubles of people around him. He was very pratical however, with a scietific mind, due his medical background. His letters are very interesting, I suggest everyone to read it also.

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Of course, this isn't a general rule, but I see the two as completely apart, and purposely so. Realism is very different I guess, than magical realism in the Borges/Calvino sense, when you deal with character. Chekhov tries to capture human misery at the moment it is most profound, whereas Borges tries to laugh at human misery and helplessness.

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Yeah, what I mean is more in the sense of pratical application, just suggestions, not excess of descriptions, capture the right emotion, careful use of words... The themes are different of course. But Tchekhov also have some critical humor... the judgment of a guy who robbed irons from raillroad to fish, the guy who is a new rich and enamored with a maiden, but as time passes he became critical, but also a sorrowful individual, the dude that tried to convice others that Siberia was a cool place... He is sentimental, of course.
As the realism goes, magical realism owns much to them, because the development of the language and we can see the roots of Magical Realism on Flaubert, even Tolstoy, Machado de Assis, Henry James, and I remember that Gorki once complained that Tchekhov would kill realism because he wrote in such way that everything seemed magical.