As part of our onging sincere, yet lazy, efforts to gradually immerse ourselves in Argentine culture… We’ve decided to only read the giants of Argentine literature, who we’re embarrased to say we haven’t read before, like Jorge Luis Borges, Ernesto Sabato, Julio Cortázar, and Aldofo Bioy Casares. [And some Márquez too, though he's not Argentine.]
So far we’ve cracked into the ‘Labyrinths’, a collection of short stories by Borges. We’ve realized that you don’t go casually flipping through a Borges story… If it’s a light, quick read you’re looking for these stories are not it…
Some of his work like ‘Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius’ takes commitment and perseverance to stay on top of what’s going on… We read the classics in college and majored in philosophy (and math). From what we’ve read so far it’s an understatement to say that Borges is extremely well read, a formidable thinker, and wordsmith… a deservably world-renowned writer… We can’t wait to dig into more of his stories…
[NOTE: We're reading these in English... We bought some English-language books this weekend from a nice little shop in San Telmo, called the Walrus. It's on Estadous-Unidos at Peru.]
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July 20, 2007 at 9:38 pm
pablodavidflores
Wow! If this serves as any consolation, you started Borges from the toughest part. The man wrote densely, packed a lot of knowledge and thought into very small, precise texts; and “Tlön…” is probably the longest thing he wrote (he never wrote but poems and short stories). A good one: they say he translates very well into English, maybe because he was bilingual since childhood, so you won’t lose too much in the translation. Enjoy!
July 21, 2007 at 12:44 am
Editor
Hey Pablo,
Borges is my new favorite author… He is fantastic… I’m almost finished with the ‘Labyrinths’ collection and am going to be reading a lot more of his work… I don’t understand 100%, many of his references are obscure, but it really gets the brain juices flowing, good stuff…
Regards,
Will