New Directions Labyrinths

I imagine in my mind what it would be like to have coffee with Luis Borges on a Sunday afternoon. Borges would be wearing a suit and have little cakes on hand, cane leaning on his armrest, as if nothing out of the ordinary were about to occur.Labyrinths is a useful first book to kick off a lifetime investigation into Borges' writings. Borges is truly original as an author as much for his intent as for his achieving it. Not quite Magic Realist, not quite Existentialist nor Kafkan: no one is Borges' equal in taking established assumptions and turning them into curious, elaborate, eruditely-supported flashing crossroads that defy simplification.Even the most unassuming essays like "The Fearful Sphere of Pascal," a subtle historical resketching, are characteristically erudite, yet sticky and complicate the subject irresistibly from your first reading onward. The prickly thorns reach out for your existing education on the subject and are designed to flesh out the glaring inconsistencies you will have read on the subject.The Garden of Forking Paths is an example of prime Borges storytelling at work. The story itself is a ruse. The first reading-through is not the time you are affected most by Borges, but rather only AFTER you have put the book down, when the Borges' physics of Being begin to gnaw at your world of compact, necessary daily conveniences, even in 2005 when we really ought to be intimately familiar with his universe by now. I think ultimately Borges sets tiny mind bombs set to detonate at exactly the time you seek to superimpose a Newtonian universe upon one of his stories, and ultimately, later, when you seek to superimpose order upon your own human experience. The entrance seems the same, but it has clearly moved by the time you exit the story. You become part of the puzzle, and that is the bedazzling signature of Borges, and his unassailable virtue. Everything solid in the universe of daily lived experience becomes compost and peacefully unsettled, as it originally was, before we came along to fix it up like morticians just before the funeral.

Borges isn't always as immediately recognizable (at least in my neck of the woods in the US of A) as many of the English-speaking authors we get educated on, but his work is HUGELY influential in several circles, and he was playing with post-modernist ideas before it was even a thing.While translated, and I cannot speak to the degree of translation accuracy since I only speak English, Borges' intent for each piece comes through clearly. Or, at least, as clearly as the several-decades gap between then and now and the deep cut references will allow it to be; this is one of those authors that will inevitably take some degree of study or analysis to pick up on everything, but even though I am certainly missing some of the subtler or niche elements present, these remain remarkably powerful.Also, to judge a book by its cover, but this is a pretty eye-catching cover. I suspect it will really show wear-and-tear with repeat use, and perhaps even more obviously than some books, but for now, it's visually striking in a way Borges deserves.

...to his enchantment through the short stories collected in "Labyrinths" (1962), which transmits his poetic magic irresistibly even through translation." So wrote Clive James in his remarkable book,  Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts . Admittedly, I'm growing "long in the tooth" to begin Borges, and since I never had, and he is one of the "giants" south of the Rio Grande, the question nagged: If not now, when?" I also tucked away a significant caveat of James': that Borges never objected to the junta that ruled Argentina in the early `80's. In fact, he famously proclaimed that "he never read newspapers," and James drew the proper and excoriating parallel with the Germans who proclaimed they had "no idea" what was occurring in those concentration camps.This book is divided into three sections. Most of the book is short fictional stories, far ranging in subject matter, and in my opinion, quality. The second section is rather straightforward critical essays, covering such subjects as the Argentinian Writer and Tradition, Franz Kafka, Paul Valéry and other literary figures. The third section is eight short parables. An introduction is provided by William Gibson, a science fiction writer most famous for his 1984 book,  Neuromancer . The connection was hard to fathom.Borges displays an astonishing erudition of the contemporary and ancient worlds across metaphysics, religion, history, literature and the arts. The very nature of time, and the choices one makes are a recurring theme, and certainly the word "labyrinth" features in most every fictional story. The maze that is life. I found the story "Garden of the Forking Paths" recalling the best of W.G. Sebald and Jarvier Marias. Of course, the actual antecedents are reversed. How much of an influence did he have on these writers? Time never seems to be linear in his stories; the choices are multiple, so there is a quantum mechanics edge to them. And at any given point in time, positions are only so many "possibilities." In "The Secret Miracle" Borges uses an epigraph from the Koran, long before many in the West did, for a story about a Czech Jew facing the firing squad. Time does a major compression in the story, as it supposedly does, at the moment of death. And for the following story, "Three Versions of Judas," I was impressed that the one line he chose from T. E. Lawrence's  Seven Pillars of Wisdom  for the epigraph was: "There seemed a certainty in degradation." Other stories involve Indians dying in prison, and a woman carefully plotting the ultimate revenge for the suicide of her husband. And "The Immortals" seems to be a rehash, with variations, of  Illiad . "Funes the Memorious" concerns an autistic savant lacking, as they do, an ability to reason. In the essay section, there is a reasonable clear discussion of Zeno's paradox.As with all collections, the quality of the stories, and the reader's reception to them, are variable. With these, I found the variation extreme. Some stories were well-composed, with incisive passages. Others, I was left wondering: Maybe it's my fault? I just don't get it. And then others, I finished convinced that this was a literary version of a Jackson Pollack painting. Borges took various erudite and insightful sentences, and splashed them on the page, with no apparent connective tissue, as though he was putting the reader on: You don't see the connections; then it is your fault. In real life, he seemed to exhibit some of these "poseur" qualities.Also, as an aside, and confirming what another reviewer pointed out: there are a large number of misspellings in this book that a basic run through spell-check would have corrected.I'd love for a commenter to urge me to reconsider, but I think this will be the only volume of Borges that I'll read. 4-stars. Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the ArtsNeuromancerSeven Pillars of WisdomIlliad

Perplexing, extraordinary, and full of historical/philosophical/theological allusions. Perhaps, the single most fascinating magic realism literature I have ever read. (big Murakami fan) It is easy to see why authors such as Pynchon, Gibson, and Murakami credit Borges with inventing the genre. Furthermore, I can see why most well-read fiction lovers hold Borges to such a high esteem. He weaves history, mystery, and the occult together into seamless works of fiction (sometimes no longer than 2 pages). At times it can be hard to distinguish the fictional from the historical, but this is undoubtedly purposeful and provides readers with a tingling curiosity.

not pseudo intellectuals either, real players mind you. you know those guys that are always being cool and thinking stuff? yeah, those guys read this book. so do I. And when I say that I read it I'm not like that dreadlocked hipster who claims he read excerpts, I mean I actually sat down and read the book. mind numbing. Borges is brilliant. This is some of his best stuff. And when I say that it is his best stuff I'm not like that guy who writes haikus on his typewriter and claims that he is heavily influenced by walt whitman. I mean this is actually good stuff. double recommend it to anyone who plays chess AND has a brain.On a scale of one to four I give it a rating of Yesterday.