false http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1178895377m/849860.jpg 17961 10 Although Jorge Luis Borges published his first book in 1923--doling out his own money for a limited edition of <I>Fervor de Buenos Aires</I>--he remained in Argentinian obscurity for almost three decades. In 1951, however, <I>Ficciones</I> appeared in French, followed soon after by an English translation. This collection, which included the cream of the author's short fictions, made it clear that Borges was a world-class (if highly unclassifiable) artist--a brilliant, lyrical miniaturist, who could pose the great questions of existence on the head of pin. And by 1961, when he shared the French Prix Formentor with Samuel Beckett, he seemed suddenly to tower over a half-dozen literary cultures, the very exemplar of modernism with a human face. <p> By the time of his death in 1986, Borges had been granted old master status by almost everybody (except, alas, the gentlemen of the Swedish Academy). Yet his work remained dispersed among a half-dozen different collections, some of them increasingly hard to find. Andrew Hurley has done readers a great service, then, by collecting all the stories in a single, meticulously translated volume. It's a pleasure to be reminded that Borges's style--poetic, dreamlike, and compounded of innumerable small surprises--was already in place by 1935, when he published <I>A Universal History of Iniquity</I>: "The earth we inhabit is an error, an incompetent parody. Mirrors and paternity are abominable because they multiply and affirm it." (Incidentally, the thrifty author later recycled the second of these aphorisms in his classic bit of bookish metaphysics, "Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Teris.") The glories of his middle period, of course, have hardly aged a day. "The Garden of the Forking Paths" remains the best deconstruction of the detective story ever written, even in the post-Auster era, and "Pierre Menard, Author of the <I>Quixote</I>" puts the so-called death of the author in pointed, hilarious perspective. <p> But Hurley's omnibus also brings home exactly how consistent Borges remained in his concerns. As late as 1975, in "Avelino Arredondo," he was still asking (and occasionally even answering) the same riddles about time and its human repository, memory: "For the man in prison, or the blind man, time flows downstream as though down a slight decline. As he reached the midpoint of his reclusion, Arredondo more than once achieved that virtually timeless time. In the first patio there was a wellhead, and at the bottom, a cistern where a toad lived; it never occurred to Arredondo that it was the toad's time, bordering on eternity, that he sought." Throughout, Hurley's translation is crisp and assured (although this reader will always have a soft spot for "Funes, the Memorious" rather than "Funes, His Memory.") And thanks to his efforts, Borgesians will find no better--and no more pleasurable--rebuttal of the author's description of himself as "a shy sort of man who could not bring himself to write short stories." <I>--James Marcus</I> 835372 1998 Collected Fictions total:2709|5:1934|4:620|3:125|2:24|1:6| 2709 12579 3903 282 17961 0140286802 9780140286809 2673 279 4.64 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1190865869m/17961.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17961.Collected_Fictions 3 5 false Mon Sep 03 22:48:09 -0700 2007 Sun Jun 22 15:22:51 -0700 2008 17961 0140286802 9780140286809 2673 279 4.64 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1190865869m/17961.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17961.Collected_Fictions 5 4 false Wed Aug 15 22:32:27 -0700 2007 Wed Oct 10 15:27:10 -0700 2007 House of Leaves - and those are just the ones I've ...more...]]> 17961 0140286802 9780140286809 2673 279 4.64 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1190865869m/17961.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17961.Collected_Fictions 5 3 false Mon Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2001 Sat Jun 09 19:44:43 -0700 2007 Sat Jun 09 19:56:23 -0700 2007 more...]]> 17961 0140286802 9780140286809 2673 279 4.64 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1190865869m/17961.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17961.Collected_Fictions 5 4 false Tue Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Sun Sep 30 14:18:52 -0700 2007 Mon Oct 13 10:40:20 -0700 2008 more...]]> 17961 0140286802 9780140286809 2673 279 4.64 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1190865869m/17961.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17961.Collected_Fictions 5 3 false Sat Jul 12 17:16:09 -0700 2008 Sat Oct 25 03:28:37 -0700 2008 more...]]> 17961 0140286802 9780140286809 2673 279 4.64 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1190865869m/17961.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17961.Collected_Fictions 5 1 false Sat Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2005 Sat Dec 20 03:41:15 -0800 2008 Sat Dec 20 03:41:37 -0800 2008 more...]]> 17961 0140286802 9780140286809 2673 279 4.64 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1190865869m/17961.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17961.Collected_Fictions 0 1 true Wed Aug 06 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Mon Aug 18 01:19:55 -0700 2008 Mon Jul 13 05:51:13 -0700 2009

Quotes:

"He knew as well that any similarit...more...]]> 17961 0140286802 9780140286809 2673 279 4.64 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1190865869m/17961.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17961.Collected_Fictions 5 6 false Tue Jul 22 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Tue Jul 22 20:04:32 -0700 2008 Tue Jul 22 21:12:39 -0700 2008
Anyone who has read Borges wil...more...]]> 17961 0140286802 9780140286809 2673 279 4.64 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1190865869m/17961.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17961.Collected_Fictions 5 1 false Sat May 03 00:21:08 -0700 2008 Fri Jul 11 23:08:06 -0700 2008 ...more...]]> 17961 0140286802 9780140286809 2673 279 4.64 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1190865869m/17961.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17961.Collected_Fictions 5 1 false Tue Sep 18 09:48:48 -0700 2007 Tue Nov 06 19:50:19 -0800 2007
The other thing that I love about Borges is his totally playful attitude. I don't know if I actually have a visual image of him in my hea...more...]]> 17961 0140286802 9780140286809 2673 279 4.64 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1190865869m/17961.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17961.Collected_Fictions 4 0 false Mon Jul 27 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Wed Jul 15 16:39:28 -0700 2009 Tue Jul 28 16:16:55 -0700 2009 more...]]> 17961 0140286802 9780140286809 2673 279 4.64 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1190865869m/17961.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17961.Collected_Fictions 5 1 false Thu May 29 14:31:25 -0700 2008 Thu May 29 14:33:47 -0700 2008 more...]]> 17961 0140286802 9780140286809 2673 279 4.64 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1190865869m/17961.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17961.Collected_Fictions 4 0 false Sun Mar 01 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Wed Apr 08 16:16:07 -0700 2009 Thu Apr 30 14:55:30 -0700 2009 more...]]> 17961 0140286802 9780140286809 2673 279 4.64 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1190865869m/17961.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17961.Collected_Fictions 5 0 false Tue Apr 07 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Wed Mar 25 11:59:57 -0700 2009 Tue Apr 07 16:58:13 -0700 2009 more...]]> 17961 0140286802 9780140286809 2673 279 4.64 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1190865869m/17961.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17961.Collected_Fictions 5 0 false Sat Sep 12 12:13:38 -0700 2009 Sat Sep 12 12:20:12 -0700 2009 more...]]> 17961 0140286802 9780140286809 2673 279 4.64 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1190865869m/17961.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17961.Collected_Fictions 0 2 false Sun Jun 01 21:30:57 -0700 2008 Sun Jun 01 21:31:26 -0700 2008 17961 0140286802 9780140286809 2673 279 4.64 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1190865869m/17961.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17961.Collected_Fictions 5 2 false Mon Jul 23 11:21:11 -0700 2007 Wed Oct 03 08:56:39 -0700 2007 17961 0140286802 9780140286809 2673 279 4.64 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1190865869m/17961.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17961.Collected_Fictions 3 0 false Sun Nov 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Wed Dec 02 14:00:33 -0800 2009 Wed Dec 02 14:00:52 -0800 2009
This was my introduction to Borges, and I found this collection of stories to be interesting and enjoyable. They were varied enou...more...]]> 17961 0140286802 9780140286809 2673 279 4.64 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1190865869m/17961.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17961.Collected_Fictions 3 0 false Fri Aug 21 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Mon Aug 10 18:03:45 -0700 2009 Mon Aug 24 15:53:52 -0700 2009
I did not read all of them, only "Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius," "Funes, The Memory," and "The Aleph." I think what most impressed me about Borges' writing style was his ability to create s...more...]]> 17961 0140286802 9780140286809 2673 279 4.64 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1190865869m/17961.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17961.Collected_Fictions 5 0 false Mon Sep 07 12:52:08 -0700 2009 Tue Nov 03 07:48:06 -0800 2009
One room was filled with unknown instruments, another had shrunk so much that he could not enter it; another one had not itself changed, but its windows and doors opened onto great sand dunes.

It is...more...]]> http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=849860