The sorts of bizarre little stories I'd rejoice over if I found them in isolation, but all of them together was a bit much. Very intellectual, rational, a lot of work to read. Puzzle-box stories. Not just puzzles-- the puzzle-box idea conjures up something of the very abstract, esoteric flavour: pure intellect.I didn't quite solve the puzzles, though, at least I think I'm missing things. The first story, for example, with its initial discursion on stories hiding another layer of reality underneath them, perceptible to a very few readers: was it such a story itself? And yet its nature would seem to preclude another reality discernible by contradictions, as it is about the reinventing of the world into one of pure intellect that is contradictory to everything in this reality.That story took me incredibly long to read, almost an hour for 20 pages. I noticed a woman beside me on the bus glancing at its pages, with the made-up-latin story name at the top, and it occurred to me to wonder if she thought it was fiction or non-fiction I was reading.Other things: what was the rite practised by the followers of the Phoenix, the one that needs no description? And should I have been able to figure out what the 20-word sentence of brother Jerome was, that was quoted and caused his downfall and yet was not itself quoted in the story, at least not that I could find? I feel a desire to inventory all the sentences in that story that contain exactly 20 words, and compare their meanings.While puzzling through one other story, I found myself reading sentences backwards in hopes that they would mean better that way, although if there were such hidden messages, they were probably lost in translation. It is appropriate that I started reading the book one fourth in, proceeded to past the two-thirds mark, then returned to the introduction, the beginning and finally the end. ( )

The Modern Library edition of this book has a woodcut by Stephen Alcorn on the dustjacket depicting a labyrinth whose walls consist of upended, open books. A figure in fedora and overcoat (Borges or the reader?) stands in the foreground. The strikes me as a pretty accurate visualization of this enjoyable collection of stories and essays arising out of bits of philosophy, mythology and literature. ( )

http://culturalsnow.blogspot.com/2009...

I've written before about the difficulty of reconciling an artist's work and politics, and how it's sometimes necessary to draw a veil over some writers' more rabid asides.

For example, here's that old rogue Jorge Luis Borges, describing the return of the Gods in the parable 'Ragnarök':

"It all began with a suspicion (perhaps exaggerated) that the Gods did not know how to talk. Centuries of fell and fugitive life had atrophied the human element in them; the moon of Islam and the cross of Rome had been implacable with these outlaws. Very low foreheads, yellow teeth, stringy mulatto or Chinese moustaches and thick bestial lips showed the degeneracy of the Olympian lineage."

...which isn't exactly an extract from Der Stürmer, but still, it's not really the sort of thing we like to hear nowadays, is it? There's a number of possible responses to this sort of thing. You can excuse it through context: it's a dream sequence; maybe it was translated badly; it's postmodern irony, stupid. Or you can treat it with polite, strained embarrassment, as if JLB were a glum uncle who's had one too many gins and starts mumbling about the blacks and the poofs and how they ought to bring back flogging.

In any case, within the space of a few lines, Borges offers up a sentence of pure, audacious magnificence:

"We took out our heavy revolvers (all of a sudden there were revolvers in the dream) and joyfully killed the Gods."

Which is so glorious that it makes everything feel OK again. Doesn't it? ( )

A slightly difficult read. However, once you figure out what your key to Borges is, things begin to click into place. For me, I need to understand his references and the contexts in which Borges is using them. As always, reading the invitation and the introduction helped greatly. I also assume Borges writes with a sense of tongue-in-cheek humor. Even if this is not the case, it gives the stories a slightly different interpretation. ( )

Call this a "Borges Reader"--a wide-ranging cross-section of fiction, essays and commentaries. What a mind this man possessed; a true devotee of the printed word... ( )