Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius

[johncwright]

It is my sincere hope that I shall not lose that reputation as a philistine of low tastes I have so exquisitely cultivated over the years. Nonetheless, even at the risk of being brought into mockery of those whose opinions I cherish above my own, I must speak.

This is a review of four baffling short stories that promise to delight anyone whom

Comments

[kmai]

I love Jorge Luis Borges! Easily my favorite author.

I would describe it as someone who gets what would be a great idea for a huge epic novel, and writes a short story instead, because it is much more to the point. :) Experimental, yes, formless and pointless, no.

[kmai]

Note from above: I am a horrible plagiarist. I was just regurgitating poorly part of Borges' introduction to "Fictions", the compilation that contains the above mentioned short stories.

I also like the stories in "The Book of Sand" and "The Aleph". I own "Universal History of Infamy," but haven't read it yet.

[mrmandias]

You may have hooked me on Borges.

Incidently, I just picked up a volume of Wolfe short stories last night that has a blurb stating 'Wolfe is our Borges.' And now that I've read a couple of the stories here, the comparison is very apt. i recommend Wolfe's short stories. Unlike lis longer works, they are fairly comprehensible.

[kokorognosis]

Aww, but I like the incomprehensibility!

[rotty_0079]

I find Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius very haunting. The whole premise is that the Death of God is irresistibly the Death of Logic ("... and the Logos was God...") It seems to encapsulate in a short story the message T.S. Eliot was attempting to convey with his whole life.

[kokorognosis]

I picked up a collection of Borges stories at the library one day specifically because I had heard Wolfe compared to him. I wasn't disappointed.

Which is more than I can say about Thomas Pynchon. A blurb on the back of one of the Long Sun books described it as "Space opera penned by Pynchon in the throws of a conversion." I was intrigued and went out and bought V.

Tried three times to read it, and finally sold it to a local used book store in... not disgust. Apathy, I suppose. I got a chicken sandwich out of it.

"Borges reads everything, especially what no one else reads anymore."

[joetexx]

The pre-bilious Christopher Hitchens wangled an interview with him shortly after the Falklands War. Borges would ask guests to whom he took a shine to read to him. If I remember, Hitchens read him English Edwardians - Chesterton & Edmund Blunden. Borges asked if they were reading much Blunden in England these days; and Hitchens thought it safe to say that Blunden was probably undergoing one of his periodic literary eclipses.

Anyways

History of the Night

Jorge Luis Borges

Throughout the course of the generations