Fictions

I've never read anything similar to Borges. Several of the works here are written as official reports documenting alternate worlds or realities. Even the ones that are in traditional story format border on uncanny territory, almost but not quite like the world we live in. It's so surreal and confusing to read but also curiosity-inducing. I probably don't understand half of what he is trying to say as I'm reading but the joy is also in analyzing and trying to make sense of it.

My favorites: The Garden of Forking Paths, The Library of Babel, and Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius

The most remarkable thing about Borges' esoteric contraptions is not their remarkableness, but the fact that they are accessible, like the start of a maze even if you get lost within. Dense and labyrinthine, Fictions nevertheless remains endlessly fascinating and the reader's goodwill is maintained throughout. Partly this is because Borges is an excellently lucid writer, even when discussing high concepts, and a storyteller (see 'The End' for some excellent storyteller's writing), and partly because he brings a natural playfulness to the prose. Borges doesn't make you feel stupid for not understanding him immediately, and whilst the short stories in Fictions require thought, they never feel like homework.

However, the main reason they show more stay fresh and fascinating is that there is nothing quite like them. They are intensely real and yet also mythic; resolutely human and yet, as Andrew Hurley remarks in his Afterword (which would have worked better as an introduction), seem to come from another planet (pg. 162). In terms of ideas, structure and originality, they stand apart, as though an alien polymath studied mankind for centuries and decided to write in High English. So much of Borges' quantum occultism has not yet resolved in my mind, but I am glad he has planted these stories there. show less

One of the charms and mysteries of reading Borges is his habit of rearranging stories into new combinations, under different names. It is thus very difficult to tell discern how much of his work you have read, and indeed to tell if you’ve read it all. That is rather the point, though. One of the stories in this collection, titled ‘Pierre Menard, Author of Don Quixote’, centres around the importance of context to literature. Even if a work contains exactly the same words as another, it differs because the author is not the same. Likewise, I’ve read ‘The Library of Babel’ and ‘Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius’ several times before in other collections. Each reading of them differs according to what preceded and followed. I show more don’t know of any other author who could get away with this behaviour, however. Such is Borges’ extraordinary talent at producing short stories. He is one of my all-time favourite authors and reading his work inevitably transforms my mood for the better.

In this particular collection, my favourite stories were ‘The Circular Ruins’, ‘The Babylon Lottery’, and ‘The Secret Miracle’. As far as I can recall, I hadn’t read any of them before, but I can’t be certain. It may be that my especial appreciation of those three stems from some particularity of who I am today. ‘The Circular Ruins’ delighted me with its descriptions of dreaming. This sentence stood out:

He understood that modelling the incoherent and vertiginous matter of which dreams are composed was the most difficult task that a man could undertake, even though he should penetrate all the enigmas of a superior or inferior order; much more difficult than weaving a rope out of sand or coining the faceless wind.

‘The Babylon Lottery’ read to me as a seductive and beautiful analogy for the chaos of life and the human liking for conspiracy. ‘The Secret Miracle’, however, deeply unsettled me by describing a habit I’ve long had and never mentioned to anyone:

Then he would reflect that reality does not tend to coincide with forecasts about it. With perverse logic he inferred that to foresee a circumstantial detail is to prevent its happening. Faithful to this feeble magic, he would invent, so that they might not happen, the most atrocious particulars. Naturally, he finished by fearing that these particulars were prophetic.

It is both wonderful and profoundly disconcerting to read fiction that peers into your mind like that. Upon reflection, I don’t ever want to be sure that I’ve read all of Borges. One of his themes is the infinitude of the written word. His rearrangements allow the reader a perpetual fount of new stories and a new perspective from each collection or re-reading. That is a gift I wish I could thank him for. show less

There have been far better storytellers than Borges, but most of them are chemists at best.

Borges' Fictions is (are?) curiously fragile. Which is not to say that they're poorly written, or that they don't hold up 70 years later, but simply that for most of these stories, I find myself wondering if they are indeed stories or simply thought experiments, essays on potential stories, a literary criticism of things never written (or, taken somewhat less literally, always and constantly written). There is always narrating going on, but it's ... diaphanous is a good word. You could make an argument that Borges, had he been a different kind of writer, could have written the novels or the short stories which he here prefers to simply outline and show more then pick apart - or let the audience pick apart - and made a pretty good career out of that. Instead, he gives us that fantastic moment in A Survey of the Works of Herbert Quain, where he tells us (fuck "show don't tell") that the greatest detective fiction can quite simply be wrong.

And yet, rereading (some of) these stories after almost 20 years I remember them, so clearly there's something more going on than just a sharp critical eye. Or if it's simply that I recognize just how much he's obviously influenced some of my best reading over the last few years, from Eco to Hoppe.

He understood that modeling the incoherent and vertiginous matter of which dreams are composed was the most difficult task that a man could undertake, even though he should penetrate all the enigmas of a superior and inferior order; much more difficult than weaving a rope out of sand or coining the faceless wind.

Time, literature, narrative, language - the idea that conceptualizing them not only makes for intriguing literature, but even the so-called "real life". Borges wrote literary viruses, little stories that should be periodically re-read to recalibrate. show less

Like a grindcore album in book form: short, intricate, brimming with exciting ideas and thought experiments. Dense and twisty tales often alluding to writing, reading, and to diverse, increasingly abstract configurations of maker and perceiver. Just try not to be too bothered by the characters' irrational compulsion to read any book they come across, regardless of context.

Highlights: Lottery of Bablyon, Circular Ruins, Death and the Compass

I generally stay away from short stories. For some reason I tend not to enjoy them, but I made an exception here because I've heard so many fantastic things about this particular collection. I'm so very glad that I did. Borges combines fantasy with the world of books in a way that makes me absolutely giddy: reviews of books that don't actually exist, the discovery of an encyclopedia detailing a country that never was, the description of a(n) (possibly) infinite labyrinthine library that includes every possible book that could ever possibly be written,... And he does it all so beautifully. If heaven itself were a book, it would look something like this.

The stories in this collection often had a peculiar twist that exploded suddenly into a vast plane of possibilities and nuances. While reading the twist you can feel the physical effect on your brain - it goes from a calm cozy contemplation to a violent combustion of grappling and grasping for explanations and boundaries. It's a stimulating ride at the end of which you tilt your head back and quietly whisper: "wtf".