Labyrinths: Selected Stories & Other Writings in Around the World in 80 Books

Oct 04, 2021 Nina ( picturetalk321 ) rated it it was ok

Shelves: z-read-gelesen-2021, z-challenge-readtheworld21, transl-spanish, zchallenge-2021-popsugar, author-white, author-man, in-german, publdate-1940s, genre-short-stories, world-argentina

What a struggle it was to get through this volume of short stories. And how have the mighty fallen. Borges was the hero
of the post-modern 1980s. I encountered him everywhere, quoted in pomo literature, analysed in pomo Theory, lauded, read 'against' and 'with' (a favourite pomo pastime) Freud, Eco, Morelli, Giambattista Vico, Cervantes, Calvino and other (male) greats of the decade.

I loved all that stuff. So I was excited finally to read some actual Borges, three decades on. I had a vague memory What a struggle it was to get through this volume of short stories. And how have the mighty fallen. Borges was the hero
of the post-modern 1980s. I encountered him everywhere, quoted in pomo literature, analysed in pomo Theory, lauded, read 'against' and 'with' (a favourite pomo pastime) Freud, Eco, Morelli, Giambattista Vico, Cervantes, Calvino and other (male) greats of the decade.

I loved all that stuff. So I was excited finally to read some actual Borges, three decades on. I had a vague memory of the library of Babylon (or was it Babel?) being particularly lauded and expected much of this set piece of philosophy and quirky magical imagination.

Such disappointment. The prose throughout is turgid. This is possibly partly due to the terrible translations from Spanish into German by Karl August Horst and Liselotte Reger. Clunky, impossible to follow, grammatically abstruse. Then there was the distinct sense that I am not the intended audience. This is for an All Male Club of Literati. Women appear in the stories sporadically (maybe 5% of page space?). The one story that has a woman as its MC, 'Emma Zunz', is about shame, revenge, prostitution, and sexual humiliation. Not a single other protagonist has sexuality even be part of their story. One man in "Der Tote" (Dead man) does have an affair but the woman appears as a mere bargaining chip among men. This is tedious and terrible. Not that I mind all-male stories but I need them to have some sort of self-reflection in order to be palatable or even excellent. Not this Borgesian assumption, unquestioned, that all interesting things happen to and with and around men. The lauded library story (of Babel; Babylon is the place of the eternal lottery, also much vaunted back in the day) describes an endless library made up of six-sided chambers, connected by hallways, each with a bathroom and a sleeping closet. The library is the whole world; its denizens live and die there. They are all men. But how do they reproduce? Are they spontaneously spawned? Their genesis is not touched upon. The gender blind spot of Borges constitutes a spectacular failure of the imagination.

One story only, Averroes auf der Suche / Averroes seeking, is a bit compelling in its acheing imagining of true cultural incomprehension despite a yearning to understand. But even that is spoiled by a self-indulgent authorial meta-epilogue. Sigh.

I do appreciate cerebral literature that doesn't dumb down its erudition. But steeped in unreconstructed patriarchy? With ultimately pointless plots and predictable ennui?

Two stars for nostalgia's sake and because I chose this from my dead father's library. His literary tastes ran that way but I could have talked about this book with him and he would have been open, eloquent and enthusiastic. I miss his intellectual curiosity and humour.

I read this for the popsugar challenge of ugliest cover. The German Dtv edition of 1969 features a design of phenomenal hideousness: a square divided into four internal triangles, in three different shades of plug-ugly purple. Vile. Designed by Dtv's resident cover artist Celestino Piatti. Piatti, how did you get it so wrong? Or maybe not wrong - maybe the cover reflects what's inside.

ETA: I have moved this review from the German edition because that edition was not linked here.

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May 19, 2008 Coqueline rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: abandoned

I haven't really read all the short stories in the book. I picked and chose those I thought would be most interesting. I have to admit Borges is brilliant in the way he superimposed philosophical questions with his own imagination. However, after more than half of the book, I lost motivation to read more. I wished he would just write novels instead of short stories. ...more

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