Labyrinths is a collection of some works of Borges, translated into English by various different people. I wanted to read Borges because I was fond of The Library Of Babel when I was young, and he is very esteemed. I did not complete this book. Of the collection I read the following:
- Fiction The Garden of Forking Paths — Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote — The Library of Babel — Theme of the Traitor and the Hero — Emma Zunz
- Essays The Fearful Sphere of Pascal — Partial Magic in the Quixote — Avatars of the Tortoise
- Parables Parable of Cervantes and the Quixote — Borges and I
I feel the need to make the ‘critical sandwich’, where your scathing thoughts are wedged between two cheap and palatable slabs of ‘positive feedback’. Often, when you want to critique something you really disliked while being nice, and that is exactly the position I am in here.
I enjoyed The Garden of Forking Paths. The way it flowed reminded me of hypnagogia, and I find dreams and hypnagogia very fascinating; maybe I just have weird dreams, but I usually feel art rarely comes close to rendering the sensation of those states accurately, but Borges did a fine job.
However, everything else just didn’t really hit anything interesting for me. The Library of Babel was interesting but not so grippting as I recall. I was irritated most by the story of Pierre Menard. The premise of the story is silly, but looking beyond that, we are told Menard becomes Cervantes (how? in what sense?) and so writes Don Quixote. Okay. And? I fail to see what is interesting in this. Then, to find any reasoning why Menard’s Quixote is ‘infinitely richer’ than Cervantes, is to deceive yourself for it is wholly unexplained, and I care not to guess on his behalf.
I wasn’t amazed by the prose, nor engaged by the stories. At the very least if the story is driven by some concept, let it be interesting or insightful! But in the stories I read, Borges was neither.
Maybe I was a bit mean, but I really expected to enjoy his work. After each piece I thought “the next one may change my mind” with sincerity; each time I was wrong. My more charitable take would be that I just don’t see what other people see in his work. Maybe again after a few years. Until then, Jorge.
If anyone reading this enjoys Borges and thinks I am wrong, I wouuld be very pleased if you could send me an e-mail to point me to some other work of his, if my selection is a poor sample.
Finally, I wanted to reflect on how interesting it is that our tastes can change so much in time. At the age of twelve I read The Library of Babel and I loved it, at the same time I read Patrick Süskind’s Perfume all the way through and hated it, I thought it was the crappest book I ever read and in my mind permanently carried a regretful sting. But last year, I re-read Perfume, expecting I would hate it even more passionately, but to my delighted surpise I could not put it away! And today I read Borges, and the stories are like a damp towel. At the age of fourteen I read Orwell’s Politics and the English Language, the first essay I ever read for my own sake. It was a huge thing for me and really shifted my perspective of English, but then every couple of years I would revisit it, I’ve been astonished to find there was even more packed into those sentences than when I read it previously. I think it is good to revisit these old things, because while they stay the same, you change a lot. It may be a great joy or a great disappointment, either way it is a powerful stimulant for thought.