Metaphysics meets fantasy in a breathtaking series of stories and essays. Challenging but rewarding. ( )

Ah, Borges! What literate person doesn't love him? What person who has read him doesn't appreciate the subtlety & recursiveness? Well, maybe the Argentinian dictators - but he seems to've survived that horrible period so, who knows? I don't. [I've since learned that he apparently survived quite well during the Dirty Wars, either oblivious to the sufferings of the disappeared or downright hostile to the subcultures they came from. He wasn't removed from his prestigious librarian's office until AFTER the dictators had fallen.] ( )

Another one of those authors that I felt that I should read. Certainly heard a lot about him ...and somewhere along the line I feel that I've read about the infinite library (though maybe it was mentioned in "the name of the rose" by Umberto Eco). What is it about short story writers that they have to be mysterious or have surprise endings. I have no idea. I guess if it doesn't have these elements it's classified as an essay. Anyway, I just found (by teaching for this book in my library) that I already have seven books with the key word labyrinths in their title. So I guess I'm somewhat intrigued by the idea of mystery, or complexity ...or maybe by the idea of finding keys to the way out etc. And one of the dreaded features of searching under the name Borges in my collections revels the fact that I DO have another book by him called "Tales of Fantasy" ....but also, somewhat embarrassingly, I already have an identical copy of this current book...unread. Ah, I should check before I buy!!
He seems to be effortlessly erudite; has read everything, speaks and reads in multiple languages and has a mind like a honeycomb......endless linked cells filled with nuggets of wisdom ..and sticky so that every bit of new information sticks to it and is absorbed. Is this knowledge/wisdom, natural? Is it forced? is it the work of multiple, patient re-workings to make the material more complex and intriguing? He does seem to have a touch of James Joyce about him in the sense that he's added so many hints and links and riddles within the work that the professors could keep speculating about its meaning for centuries. Is it worth the effort to try and mentally unravel these. I think not. Probably the most famous story her is about the hexagonal library (or composed of hexagonal cells with the complete set of books that could be written ....with every permutation possible with the letters that we have (or 25 symbols in this case). The problem is that most of it is clearly nonsense....such as the complete book composed of MCV's. It does remind me a bit of sequences of amino acids making up the code for DNA...and the long strings of "nonsense code" ....which more recently has been shown, in many cases, to actually encode for things like stopping the production of a protein etc. In other words, not being nonsense. So same sort thing might apply to MCV repeated multiple times.
This collection of writings is not all tricky short stories but has some serious scholarship considering whether there is such a thing as "Argentinian writing" ..and the relationship to tradition. He seems to be sceptical.....but I learned something interesting along the way: apparently there is no mention of camels in the Koran. (Always useful to know!).
Overall, I liked the book. I'm impressed by Borge's imagination and erudition. I just don't want to spend too much time trying to "interpret" it. But happy to give it four and a half stars ( )

Borges is one of the absolute masters of 20th century writing. ( )