Because I've been reading and loving Borges since high school, I've had the occasion to reflect in some detail on the havoc his work plays with traditional notions of genre. It's no accident that the English-language collection devoted to his poetry has a good deal of what looks like prose inside. This genre-bending also holds true for this non-fiction collection, which periodically turns up a piece that reads exactly like one of his ficciones that purports to present real history. But there are plenty of reviews of a more straightforward nature that do not feel like that sort of deception. I have been repeatedly delighted to find that Borges offers learned but unstuffy opinions that avoid what we now call snark while still managing to see through the Emperor's new clothes. His take on Finnegan's Wake, for example, boldly targets its easy punning as an indication of the author's shortcomings. I'll try to post a few quotes from other pieces in the collection later this week.
Non-Fictions
Because I've been reading and loving Borges since high school, I've had the occasion to reflect in some detail on the havoc his work plays with traditional notions of genre. It's no accident that the English-language collection devoted to his poetry has a good deal of what looks like prose inside. This genre-bending also holds true for this non-fiction collection, which periodically turns up a piece that reads exactly like one of his ficciones that purports to present real history. But there are plenty of reviews of a more straightforward nature that do not feel like that sort of deception. I have been repeatedly delighted to find that Borges offers learned but unstuffy opinions that avoid what we now call snark while still managing to see through the Emperor's new clothes. His take on Finnegan's Wake, for example, boldly targets its easy punning as an indication of the author's shortcomings. I'll try to post a few quotes from other pieces in the collection later this week.
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Redefining Need
"Can a society which is incapable of protecting individual privacy even within one's four walls rightfully claim that it respects the individual and…
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Mind Out of Joint
These are strange and stressful times for all of us. But I feel simultaneously more prepared and less able to deal with this state of emergency.…
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It Begins
My daughter went to Las Vegas with friends this afternoon. Her mom is staying late at her downtown studio. My dad is asleep at his facility. And I…
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