Fictions (Calderbooks S.) (original 1944; edition 1991)

Borges is wicked smart and, as near as I can tell, has read all the books. At first, reading the stories was a struggle; they were fiction, but read like non-fiction and they didn't "click". Eventually I fell in love with the metaphysical devices and the explorations of time. Two recommendations: read some background information on Borges & his fiction (the wiki article will probably do) and make sure to read the Andrew Hurley translation not the Anthony Kerrigan translation. ( )

Wow. Just WOW.

I'm going to have to read these again. They're so complex and multilayered and unbelievably rich. I don't think that anyone can claim to have extracted all of their meaning in one sitting.
And still, nothing about them even remotely sounds pretentious. Everything's so finely tuned and so well crafted - you never doubt that whatever you haven't quite grasped is entirely your fault.

Yes, I'm definitely reading it again. But for now, WOW. ( )

About half through but am going to save the rest for when I get some less-interrupted reading time.

Tengo que decir antes que nada que los cuentos "Las ruinas circulares" y "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" son mis favoritos. No alcanzan las palabras ni las infinitas cifras para describir o puntuar al genio de Borges. Deslumbrante. ( )

I'm not a huge fan of short stories, so I wasn't that thrilled when I picked this up and realized that's what I was in for. It was an odd collection - musings on reality, fate, chance, knowledge, faith, fate, to name a few. The stories vary in length and complexity (well, I believe they're all pretty complex; his writing is dense and multi-layered). Some are difficult to penetrate, some lead you right in. Themes, words, events and characters recur in various guises. The word "labyrinth" appears frequently, and appropriately (and yes, his book Labyrinths is also on the 1001 Books list).

At times, I wondered if I was really up to the task of reading these stories. Even his introductions to them (the stories are in two sections) are occasionally intimidating. He understates: "One of [the stories], "The Babylon Lottery," is not entirely innocent of symbolism." Of another, he says, "let it suffice for me to suggest that it can be read as a direct narrative of novelistic events, and also in another way." These are like the intros to puzzles, which is certainly appropriate.

I tell you all of that to tell you that I'm not sure I'm properly equipped to really have an opinion on this book. I'm positive some of it (much of it?) went over my head, and there are layers of meaning I would only approach on re-reading. The stories defy simple one-line synopses, so I'll only talk about a couple of them. One of my favorites was "Pierre Menard, Author of Don Quixote," which is about a man determined to recreate Cervantes' masterpiece. Not reproduce, but recreate - he is trying to find a way to spontaneously write the same book (in the same archaic Spanish, of course). This leads to an amusing comparison between the works. The narrator of the story quotes Cervantes, and judges his words essentially unimaginative, but when the exact same words are quoted from Menard's version, "the idea is astounding." Parallels can be drawn to so many arts. Does it make a work more significant depending on who produced it and when? Does doing something the hard way make it more meaningful?

Another story I enjoyed was "The Library of Babel," about an infinite library containing all the books which can possibly be created. In this one, I found an echo of Lewis Carroll's words for Humpty Dumpty:

"'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.'
'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so many different things.'"

Borges says, "An n number of possible languages makes use of the same vocabulary; in some of them, the symbol library admits of the correct definition ubiquitous and everlasting system of hexagonal galleries, but library is bread or pyramid or anything else, and the seven words which define it possess another value. You who read me, are you sure you understand my language?" (Especially rich for those of us who are reading in translation.)

Recommended for: people who like to use the word "meta," people who are interested in books that never existed, poetry lovers, non-believers in "reality," and people who enjoy cryptic crosswords. ( )