Collected Fictions

not sure why this Borges book hasn't arrived yet, been over a month. just sayin.

The critical applause the marketing department of this book's publisher dreamed up is one recent example of how money corrupts art. Penguin, often a reliable imprint, needs to be told that THERE IS NO EXCUSE FOR PUBLISHING INFERIOR MATERIAL. This was the first Borges I read, and I loved it, until I encountered alternative translations in an anthology called 'Borges: A Reader'. I noticed that the most elegant and intense translations were by someone called Norman Thomas di Giovanni. I asked a number of my Spanish-speaking friends to compare the stories to the originals, and they unanimously agreed that the di Giovannis were more accurate as well. Later I heard that di Giovanni published a number of Borges' works in several books that are now out of print. I wondered why a superior translation would be superseded by a new, clunky one, and why this new clunky one would be hailed as the "definitive English version". I found out that it's because di Giovanni made his translations in collaboration with Borges himself, that they spent years getting it right, and that Borges wept with joy over the translations which he deemed in some cases better than the original. So they agreed to split the profits 50/50, an unprecedented thing for translator to make that percentage. When Borges died his Estate decided they'd make more cash if they got a new translation... and they hold the copyrights. Thus the true definitive versions are condemned to dust.

The best that can be said about Hurley's translation is that they're "capable" (see Harold Bloom's obviously paid-for quote on the back); well, you'd have to REALLY screw up to make Borges not amazing. In other words, read whatever you can because Borges is the absolute greatest: the most intellectual fantacist, the most romantic scifi artist, the most classical modernist and modern classicist... and let's not forget the inventor of postmodernism.

I should say that after reading all of Hurley's Borges and most of di Giovanni's (as well as versions by various other people here and there) there's nothing really *wrong* with Hurley; often he succeeds in being more "cool" (in a curt, bad*ss kind of way) than di Giovanni, though at the cost of Borges' Victorian intellectual tone (present in all the writings, lectures, and interviews he did in English, as well as the Di Giovanni versions); and instead of re-translating into English from Spanish the bits here and there that Borges translated from English (most often and lengthily occurring in 'A Universal History of Infamy') Hurley just prints the text of the original verbatim, which breaks down some of Borges' carefully crafted illusions but offers much more insight. Also, he is on occasion a little more literal than the Di Giovanni/Borges translations, and therefore perhaps more 'authentic' in some sense... but is it possible to be more true to Borges than Borges was? Changes from the original stories in the Di Giovanni versions must be viewed as the author's revised intentions rather than as inaccurate translation, because of how closely Borges worked with him.

Bottom line: In a perfect world, both (and even more) versions would be readily available. But in the present circumstances, where due to greedy money battles we must have one and only one, and all others must be locked in the vault and kept from the eyes of the people forever, why would we want the results of some guy's day job instead of the one Borges himself worked on?

WHY WOULD THEY KEEP THAT FROM US?

Don't support this blacklisting; seek out the di Giovanni versions and demand Penguin stop publishing inferior material.

In a final note, I would recommend 'Borges: A Reader' edited by Emir Rodriguez Monegal and Alastair Reid over any other Borges book in print as both the best place to start and an essential volume. It contains poems, lectures and essays, movie reviews, satires, and of course a great many of the stories printed here, from a variety of translators (including a few Hurleys and a whole lot of Di Giovannis). There is material here you can't find anywhere else, and as two Spanish speakers and Borges experts you can trust them to pick "the best translations" as they say. It is out of print but not hard to come by. Explore!

My first experience with the writing of Borges. I enjoy his ability to bring the reader into the middle of an ongoing experience - that is, to create the sense that the story had been going on long before one starts reading. My only hesitation in this review is that the translation might make his writing less accessible. I need to read the other translator to determine which I like best.

Trying to full describe the writings of Jorge Luis Borges is like trying to explain exactly why Leonardo da Vinci's art still captivates. The man wrote works of art.

And this classic writer's brilliant, surreally exquisite works are on best display in "Borges: Collected Fictions," whose plain name belies the subtle power and exquisite beauty of Jorges' short stories. His intricate and atmospheric narratives are magical, rich in language, and lets us glimpse the minds of anything and anyone he can conjure up.

Interestingly, the first of these "Fictions" is a series of fictionalized stories about real people -- veiled prophets, Chinese pirates, silver-tongued outlaws, Swedenborg, a Japanese courtier and a legendary American outlaw. Only Borges' vivid writing gives these stories a larger-than-life quality, as if he had spun them out of his imagination.

But the completely fictional stories he created don't take long to appear. Among them are more gritty narratives -- a pair of brothers torn by their mutual love for a woman, a girl coldly calculating her revenge, a labyrinthine story of espionage during World War II, and a woman whose obsession with her dead, dashing husband leads her down into madness.

But these are far outweighed by Borges' magical realism, which soaks the book from start to finish -- encounters with past and future selves, brilliant books and authors that never existed, the mystical Aleph and Zahir which show everything and nothing, a hunt for blue tigers that leads to strangely fascinating stones, an alchemist's rose, a poet telling a king of pure beauty and wonder, and receiving the hazy memories of Shakespeare.

And then some of his stories cross the border into pure wonder and fantasy. Borges explores the concept of the Eternal Library that catalogues reality, masks, Minotaurs, a man who tries to dream a new being into existence, a search for a city of ancient immortals, and the exploration of ancient heresies, cities, endless books and cults that never existed at all, except in the confines of Borges' mind.

If this collection has any flaw at all, it's that Borges isn't at his best when he tells gritty realistic stories, about knifings, mobs and barroom murders. While these stories are powerful, they feel vaguely restrained, as if he's holding back his writing skill from its fullest.

The rest of the time, Borges' writing is exquisitely detailed and atmospheric, and densely packed with philosophical pockets. And these stories are magical realism in the purest sense, with a slight, almost mystical twist to the everyday events that we take for granted. Being mistaken for someone else, being sold a book, and visiting a relative all take on deep significance.

And Borges wraps these stories in lush, digified prose that takes a little while to wade through, but the richness of the words he uses is worth it ("A landscape dazzlingly underlain with gold and silver, a windblown, dizzying landscape of monumental mesas and delicate colouration..."). He's even able to alter his style drastically -- one story has the flavor of an Irish legend, while another is a Lovecraftian sci-fi horror story about aliens in a farmhouse. And his writing takes on many different people's selves -- he even makes readers squirm by taking us into the mind of a loyal Nazi.

It's almost like another world, Borgeworld, which is almost like ours, but where magical items are hidden in the cellars, houses are built by angels, the Minotaur plays in his maze, and God dreams of mortal lives. The most entrancing foray into Borgeworld is "The Immortal," about a Roman soldier who goes searching for a city of immortals, and finds an ancient poet who seems very familiar.

"Borges: Collected Fictions" is a very dull name for the collected works of a literary genius, full of shadows, mirrors, masks and the expanses of the human mind. Definitely a must-have.

When you read Kafka and you hear the term "Kafkaesque" you understand a little more about the world we live in. From the bureaucratic nonsense of your neighborhood government office to the futility of using reason/logic when dealing with the criminally stubborn and arrogant, the twentieth century Prague author understood what the next hundred years would be like.

Borges is Borges... in some sense he is the literary figure behind magic realism (along with German literature of the nineteenth and early twentieth century). I've heard the term "Borgesian" once or twice but it's not quite as famous. Nonetheless, the two authors have a lot to offer. I prefer Borges. There is something mystical to him, a sage-like presence in his writings. His genius isn't complicated, it is very honest - he writes stories that feel like essays, narratives that are poignant and celestial, and prose poems that breathe heavy with philosophy and feeling. Reading this collection you'll encounter: the entire universe in one's basement, a youth retrieving a souvenir of another life, a man trying to understand the "play of goodbyes"... as well as bandits, ruffians, librarians, Don Quixote, Shakespeare and other vast, quiet dreams, from the double to the figure of the alchemical Golem.

It is a great treat to have all the stories together in one volume (in my hometown I had to do an interlibrary loan through the central library to track down his prose poems - the university at the time didn't have a copy either). I believe if you read Borges, you'll not only appreciate his genius, the direction Latin American literature has taken but also the literature of the past. Since my first introduction to his works I have gained a new love of English literature, philosophy and the religions of the far east.

Borges is essential and that too me is "Borgesian".