The anxiety I have felt reading this books is a unique experience I have yet to have elsewhere. Truth to be told, I have no idea what’s going on in most of the stories, and that isn’t resulting from a lack of trying, I quite literally just cannot tell what is going on most of the times from the author’s leap of information from one line of thinking that merges into another one.

That aside, there are some notable stories in the section “Fictions” that I particularly enjoyed. I liked The Circular Ruins, Theme of the Traitor and the Hero, and I quite liked The Garden of Forking Paths .Everything else is somewhat of a mystery to me. I think there is something notable about the way he writes, that makes it read like a very intelligent but somehow tortured man’s ramblings as he’s going through some sort of withdrawal. Certain things are described with such detail and added information that is seems overloading, yet the significance of the details don’t seem as apparent to the happenings of the story, despite it being told as if each word is the vessel of some sort of uncovered treasure. Perhaps this is something that will resolve itself if I re-read the book and discover new things which I guess alludes to the idea of play. But I think the conclusion is that I probably won’t be able to wrap my head around his way of writing.

One story that particularly stood out to me is the Three Versions of Judas. I’ve never considered this idea that the book proposed. However, I do think there is something to be said about how Jesus would not be Jesus without Judas, and that both met similar ends, and there is something to be said about how both were sacrifices for this greater story to happen. I think it falls in like with something like “there is no knowing the light without first knowing dark”.

Another section (this time under “Parables”) that was particularly intriguing was Borges and I. This might be a very 21st century internet kid of me to say, but his thoughts somewhat remind me of how we think about how to curate “our existence” on social media. I think the parallels are they both experience this sort of weird boundary in our identities, where one seems more like a persona and the other is the one that “experiences things” but these things ultimately are taken by this persona and shaped into something else that is a part of it. Like maybe you like tennis, but the desire for this to pass into your “persona” and post it online as if that solidifies this “identity” shapes you to be “a person that plays tennis” and no longer someone that is just experiencing this game. Or maybe this thought of mine also reads like a withdrawing man’s ramblings.

My question to all is: What story made the biggest impression on you and why?