As much as it pains me to say this, I legitimately enjoyed reading the collection of Jorge Luis Borges’ short stories in Labyrinths, because of terrible it is, like a bad movie that you are compelled to watch despite its mediocrity. However, before I discuss the negatives that I found in Borges’ work, I should appropriately point out what Borges’ does right in his stories, as such this part of my blog post will be more of an opinion piece and review compared to my previous weeks blog posts. Borges uses his knowledge of Hispanic literature, history, religion, Argentine and then-contemporary events in an imaginative way to weave colorful tales of the human experience. However, Borges’ completely misses the mark in what made these previous stories, that he draws upon, great. The results of his boasting and irritating arts trivia knowledge, is an incoherent mess that leaves he reader of his stories not only awe struck, but utterly dumbfounded and unable to process the messy layers that he weaves into his stories. To draw upon Borges’ as inspiration in my use of references, his work resembles that of Jackson Pollock than Pablo Picasso, in that what he thinks is clever, is actually incomprehensible.
While I do believe that Borges’ is a great writer when he wants to be, and a decent person overall when he wants to be, his methods of creating really entertaining and thought provoking stories are often bizarre and he gets carried away with himself at times. I was first exposed to Borges’ when I had to read Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote, which is one of my least favorite pieces of fiction of all time, in the original Spanish for a Spanish literature course last year. While a writer writing in the persona of a French writer writing in the persona of Don Quixote might make a good premise for a hilarious rip-roaring comedy film or play, Borges’ takes this one one-hundred-percent seriously and unfortunately in the format of a short story. Perhaps my first experience of Borges’ was soured by this encounter, as I had little to no context as to what I was getting myself into, but reading Borges’ other works, this time in English, I am beginning to doubt this assessment. Maybe I should read some of his other works in other short story collections, but seeing as this is his most famous, I really do not think that the third-time will do it for me.
To end this nightmare,
Why do you think Borges’ writes the way that he does?
I’m not so sure that Borges wrote “Pierre Menard…” in a very serious way. In fact, in my reading, he is making fun of other writers who tried to rewrite texts from the Spanish Golden Age, like the same Larrea he mentions. Borges’s humor is so peculiar that it doesn’t make us smile too much.
(Your final question is somehow general, I think that for the following weeks you could ask them taking the texts more into account)
I really enjoyed reading your blog post, as I could feel the frustration through the computer screen. I too was frustrated reading this book, however our class discussions this week lead me to look at difficulty and frustration in a different way, and appreciate that it’s okay to not always know what’s going on.
I think Borges writes the way he does for various reasons – maybe he wanted to challenge what Latin American literature meant at the time, or maybe it was apart of his artistic charm. Either way, it doesn’t always make it too enjoyable to read, but maybe that’s the point all along.