When people compare Borges to Gabriel Garcia Marquez I have to wonder if they've actually read either of those authors. Other then being notable Spanish language writers of weirdness they couldn't be more different. Marquez is Dionysus, Borges is Apollo. Borges' stories are neat, dry packages to be carefully opened up preferably in the silence of an air conditioned library.
Borges has complex philosophical ideas to convey and the delivery mechanism of a story or a plot are frequently hassles to him. His most convincing works are from the detached perspective of a man looking back through the fog of years or the perspective of an editor pouring through an unreliable translation of an invented ancient epic. In Averroes' Search he simply annihilates the invented world the story takes place in because he couldn't stand any longer the indignity of a plot.
Borges is my favorite kind of genius, the kind with obvious and easily identifiable quirks. ( )

Every few pages Borges manages to change my perception of the world. Some of these stories are eye-opening even if they fail to reveal the meaning of life, they still contain infinity. That said, there were a couple of stories that I didn't get into and "The Maker" section was a bit too specific to Argentina and Classics for me to fully appreciate. But, looking past that, Borges is a god. ( )

The fame Jorge Luis Borges received came nearly twenty years after writing his best short stories, many of which are collected in "The Aleph." These stories are all very short, from just a paragraph to a few pages. They do not fit clearly in genre fiction, but they are mostly fantastical.

There are references to ancient cultures and civilizations, discussions of immortality and fallibility, and a constant warping of time, mostly set in Argentina in the late 1800's or early 1900's. I spent very little time or effort trying to understand some of these ideas and I think I am better off for having simply read through the stories. While literary and high when they come from Borges, these stories might be considered pulp science fiction coming from other writers.

One criticism that I have seen in other reviews is that women are absent from the worlds Borges creates. This is definitely true. There is a one female protagonist - a woman plotting to avenge her father's death - in the entire book. In another story, an unnamed woman acts as a reason for Borges' characters to discuss loyalty and love.

The translation I read, by Andrew Hurley, is smooth and free-flowing. ( )

“The Aleph”–Like most of his stories, this one is brief but packs a lot of information into its short length. (For those who don’t read outside of SF, imagine a J.G. Ballard condensed novel with more connections and a higher sense of the fantastic. Hmm, that was a worthless description. It is hard to find a match for Borges in the genre, because he was always succinct, and could never have survived in the dog-eat-dog world of pay by word.) The gimmick is simple–the aleph is to space what eternity is to time–but the method by which the author discovers it is unusual. I like Borges because his approach to a fantastic concept is unlike any found in the genre. Genre writing seems to emphasize the gimmick, in mainstream writing it is simply one part of the landscape against which the characters are placed. Only in Borges do all elements seem equal, similar in concept to his own aleph, to return in a style similar to Borges himself.


“Streetcorner Man”–A first-person tale of one night in the barrio, when the ones who talk big get their comeuppance by the quiet ones. OK, but I like my stories to have a little something more.

“The Approach to aI-Mu’tasim”–A review of a fictional book which reads, again, like a condensed novel, only in this case it truly is one. The literary device is ingenious, allowing Borges to comment on literary criticism at the same time he is creating literature.

“The Circular Ruins”–One of Borges’ favorite subjects is the concept of infinity, another is creation. Here he bends the two together in a story that is also a metaphor for the process of setting and achieving goals.

“Death and the Compass”–A logic problem to a mystery story, almost like Edgar Allen Poe. Poe, though, would have stretched it out to twice its length.

“The Life of Tadeo Isidoro Cruz (1829-1874)”–I did not quite follow this one. At one point I thought that maybe Cruz was going to be killing his own father, but instead he goes to the aid of himself?

“The Two Kings and Their Two Labyrinths”–A fable, or a sermon, that addresses what is a labyrinth. Highly appropriate subject for a Borges collection.

“The Dead Man”–A gaucho story. Think of it as a Louis L’amour story with Argentines and Brazilians instead of Mexicans and Texans. Okay, but it’s still a western at heart.

“The Other Death”–This is what I look for in Borges: a fantastical study of memory and history, reality and dream. Pedro did not act like a hero in the battle… or did he?

“Ibn Hakkan al-Bokhari, Dead in His Labyrinth”–Another great story of mazes and mystery. Borges has an unusual way of framing his tales, usually with an objective third person narrator, that shortens the stories tremendously. I guess he did not get paid by the word.

“The Man On the Threshold”–Another mystery, but not quite as fantastic as the others. Some Of these stories are morality or revenge plays, that do not require much speculation.

“The Challenge”–A rehash of some of the gaucho themes, certainly my last favorite of his tropes. What I find interesting is the references to other stories flirt makes this seem like a reference article instead of a story.

“The Captive”–A short short about a boy captured as a young child by natives. Borges here formulates a question about the nature of memory.

“Borges and Myself”–Here, as in “Isidore Cruz” above, Borges talks about the nature of identity. When you look at how others perceive you and realize that that is not how you perceive yourself is a crisis of identity (as in here), or how people might perceive a younger version of you. I often look at my current life and wonder. There is no way that Glen circa. 1980 could have ever dreamed of becoming the Glen of 1998. Thoughts and hopes and goals are all so mutable. The funny thing is that I will reread these words 10 or more years from now and be struck by the same strangeness.

“The Maker”–A discussion of what it means to go blind, nominally about Homer, but also about Borges’ own condition. I had not realized that Borges had gone blind before his death.

“The Intruder”–Borges says that his mother, who he dictated this story to, hated it, and I can see why. It’s not something I would recommend to any woman, as it is quite misogynstic. However, it is an incredible story, and a fairly straightforward one for Borges, about friendship and brotherhood.

“The Immortals”–A science fiction tale, strangely incongruous here. Well done, but it seems much more dated than almost everything else in this collection (stories from 1933 to 1969).

“The Meeting”–Clever little tale about people and weapons. Almost a trick story, because the title refers to something other than what you expect.

“Pedro Salvadores”–Short short about dictatorships and living “underground” (actually, both literally and figuratively). Borges had a real knack for the short short, never an easy thing to write.

“Rosendo’s Tale”–To come almost entirely full circle, this tale is a sequel or antidote to the second story,

“Streetcorner Man.” The gaucho here is more realistic, not so macho, and I find myself appreciating this more because of having seen the Hemingway-ish earlier story.

Finally, there is an autobiographical essay at the end, for those of us who wonder how Borges evolved (as Borges himself does in “Borges and Myself”). This collection is an excellent introduction to Borges, and clearly shows how he revolutionized the short story and became the pater familias of a new genre classification. ( )

"There's no need to build a labyrinth when the entire universe is one." (pg. 101)

I always find it hard to review Borges, in part because it's always more difficult to zero in on why you enjoy the things you enjoy than it is to tear apart the things you dislike; in part because of the formidable intricacy of Borges' stories; and partly because there is a consistency of style, theme and excellence across them, for all that each is unique, and it means I find I am repeating myself as to the superlatives I use. Borges' The Aleph, the Penguin edition of which also includes selections from The Maker, is another arresting collection of laconic stories about warriors, mystics, gauchos, criminals and ordinary men, that also delves into original and profound questions of reality, humanity, memory and infinity. And yet, in writing that sentence, I feel I have failed to say anything worthwhile; that I have repeated my reviews of Ficciones, Labyrinths and The Book of Sand.

It is perhaps inevitable, when trying to assess this master of paradox and constructor of labyrinths, this believer in the cyclical and the eternal, that I find myself returning to the same meagre, catch-all superlatives in my reviews. Borges, of course, says it better than I can, and all I can do is try to recognise it when he does: "although in one's memory days all tend to be the same," he writes in 'The Wait', "there wasn't a day, even when a man was in jail or hospital, that didn't have its surprises" (pp108-9). This captures the book's essence, a shape-shifting that retains a single shape: stories of meticulous detail that are unique and precise and dedicated, and yet each of which contains universally-applicable multitudes. "Which of us, walking through the twilight or retracing some day in our past, has never felt that we have lost some infinite thing?" Borges asks on page 167, and it is this universal journey which runs through each of his stories even when no more overt similarities can be found.

Many of the stories are immaculate. Not only are they, as I have suggested, intricate and profound on a literary and conceptual level, but they also have a popular element: many are adventures and mysteries and crime stories following the warriors and mystics and gauchos I mentioned above. Borges writes that these stories "belong to the genre of fantasy" (pg. 134), and this is the only line in the book which falls short (perhaps intentionally). With respect to the fantasy genre, these are so much more than that. It is literature of the highest class. Borges can deliver, with casual precision, elegant thoughts on innumerable topics that are not only gold, but gold in a chest full of other treasures.

In the third story, 'The Theologians', Borges writes of that "nagging sense of guilt" felt by those who possess libraries, that they have not yet been "acquainted with every volume" (pg. 28). I did not intend to read The Aleph so soon after my last Borges (less than a month ago), but the book was primed on my shelf and the stories have proved so compelling that, rather than a sense of guilt, I feel only excitement that I have so many more yet to read.

"I am not certain whether I ever believed in the City of the Immortals; I think the task of finding it was enough for me." (pg. 5) ( )