With Borges: (edition 2004)

Exceedingly boring ( )

...and Albert Manguel.Before plunging into my biography of Borges, I thought I'd read a shorter work by an author I've already come to love. I was rewarded by this book, a short treasure of revelatory moments. Manguel mostly skims over his reservations - this is, after all, a celebratory piece - but is sure to depict Borges in a light that is more than simply flattering, but is rather humanizing.If you don't mind paying a bit for what is essentially a short, short story, I would recommend this in an instant. ( )

Intéressant, Borgès est un personnage étonnant
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For a few years in the mid-1960’s, Alberto Manguel was a reader for the blind Jorge Luis Borges in his apartment in Buenos Aires. This short book is a remembrance of those times, “memories of memories.” As a longtime Borges reader, I found the description of his mode of living interesting, and was pleased to see that he shared a fondness for Durer’s The Knight, Death, and the Devil (his print was in his bedroom – mine hangs in my library). Borges lived and breathed reading – the sort of person who could pick up any printed material and find some meaning in it. The apparent simplicity of his works, most of which were quite short, belies their true complexity. I recall reading an analysis of “The Garden of Forking Paths” and being blown away by the layers of meaning in the story, layers that are not apparent in a casual reading. Borges, like Nabokov, demands that the reader read with sharp attention.

My one complaint is that my paperback edition lacks the photographs of other editions. If I had known, I would have opted for a more expensive edition.