About this title: "Fictions" is a collection of short stories, influenced by writers as disparate as Lewis Carroll, Stevenson and Cervantes. Borges turns dry logical puzzles into enchanting fables.
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Description: Very Good. Former Library book. Great condition for a used book! Minimal wear. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Emece Editores
Date Published: 1968
Description: Good. No dust jacket as issued. Spanish text. Cover shows wear with rubbing & light creases; name on flyleaf, text appears unmarked, only lightly tanned. Text in Spanish. read more
Description: Very Good. 0802130305 **Softcover**--Exactly as described with earlier cover style--cover has shelf wear at tips of corners and minor cover crease or curl, minor Spine Creasing, No personalizations, No marks in the text at all. Tight and well bound. read more
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Rayo
Date Published: 2008
ISBN-13:9780061565373ISBN:0061565377
Description: Good. No dust jacket as issued. Pencil marking. Creased cover. Ships fast! No torn pages. Text in Spanish. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 224 p. Esenciales. Audience: General/trade. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: New York: Grove Press, 1962, New York
Date Published: 1962-01-01
Description: Good. Good paperback. Previous owner's writing/markings on some pages. Covers show edge wear and creases on spine.; 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed! Free Delivery Confirmation! Ships same or next business day! read more
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Grove Pr
Date Published: 1969-06-01
ISBN-13:9780802130303ISBN:0802130305
Description: NEW. Softcover. From an inventory that is 100% brand-new, 100% direct from the publishers' distribution channel. We carry NO pre-owned, NO remaindered. We pack in CARDBOARD to ensure the pristine quality is maintained. (Bubble-wrap alone is NOT sufficient to protect from USPS equipment. ) Guaranteed brand-NEW, protected with CARDBOARD, your satisfaction is guaranteed. BKLUVID: 9780802130303. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Grove Press
Date Published: 1994
ISBN-13:9780802130303ISBN:0802130305
Description: New. Brand New! Buy with confidence-your satisfaction is guaranteed at B-Logistics! Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. Please note that Expedited shipping is not available at this time. read more
Description: Good. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Rayo
Date Published: 2008-05-01
ISBN-13:9780061565373ISBN:0061565377
Description: NEW. Softcover. From an inventory that is 100% brand-new, 100% direct from the publishers' distribution channel. We carry NO pre-owned, NO remaindered. We pack in CARDBOARD to ensure the pristine quality is maintained. (Bubble-wrap alone is NOT sufficient to protect from USPS equipment. ) Guaranteed brand-NEW, protected with CARDBOARD, your satisfaction is guaranteed. BKLUVID: 9780061565373. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Rayo
Date Published: 2008
ISBN-13:9780061565373ISBN:0061565377
Description: New. Brand New! Buy with confidence-your satisfaction is guaranteed at B-Logistics! Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. Please note that Expedited shipping is not available at this time. read more
I woke up in the middle of the night last night, say about three-ish Eastern Standard Time, and my mind ricocheted off several topics of inquiry, ranging from the bleakly existential to the utterly ridiculous, before finally arriving at an odd contemplative subject: Borges' short story collection Ficciones.
Odd, because I read it probably -- I dunno -- six months ago? And I haven't thought about it much since. And this was part of the problem. Why has everyone reacted so rapturously to this book (and to Borges in general), while I hem and haw and try to mitigate my somewhat tepid feelings about it with phrases like "a great book of ideas" and "insanely clever."
There's a hollowness (and a diversion) in those phrases because neither of them really speaks to what generally matters most to me in a book -- emotional connection. I have no strong feelings for Borges, tender or even vitriolic. He's beige to me. I can step back and say, "Wow, that's a really cool idea he had in that story," but in the end I find his execution of it didactic, aloof, and intellectually showy.
A number of books in the traditional canon of Great Literature have caused me to doubt myself, to wonder what's wrong with me that I just don't "get" this thing. I mean, really... you can hardly keep people on this site from spontaneously ejaculating all over the place when Borges is the topic of conversation. Sometimes this glorification strikes me as absurd, disgustingly pious, with a Village of the Damned-style somnambulance; but mostly I have suspected that I somehow failed Borges or this book -- that I just wasn't up to its challenges and lacked the readerly skills to appreciate his brilliance. (This is the reason why I haven't reviewed this book until now. Many of you probably suspect that I'm an emperor without clothes in many cases, and yet I've been reluctant to be a heretic in this Land of Borgesians.)
But no more. When I was lying in bed, I thought of a bunch of (what I thought were) great descriptors for why this book isn't so great -- none of which I can recall -- and I resolved myself to be unapologetic in my criticism of Ficciones when I wrote a book report some time later today.
Some time later today is now.
Yes, I realize I am overstating my displeasure with this book (because I did actually like it to a certain extent), but I guess I'm reviewing on the curve. There are so many nauseatingly effusive endorsements of Borges on Goodreads -- this book's average rating is currently 4.54, for Chrissake! -- that I think it warranted a deflationary adjustment.
"The Library of Babel" is a pretty classic example of Borges. He tells us about this (awkwardly literal-minded) infinite library that contains everything. And I'm saying that Borges tells us about it quite pointedly because I think this is one of the alienating features of many of his stories. Although they may be told personally, it's always with a distanced, textbook-like manner: in a voice as if borrowed from news reports, encyclopedias, and stoical histories. The ideas themselves (yes, intriguing) are often bombastically allegorical and layered with all manner of learned allusions (some real, some not real).
I get the general idea of creating alternate realities, built up with details and a nearly-scientific rigor, but in the end... so what? I ultimately ended up thinking, "Oh, {sigh} I guess I better read some of that Borges." Not, generally speaking, evidence of a book's power.
I am tired of feeling "ashamed" (is that the right word?) of having this opinion. It is what it is, and I needed to exorcise this feeling so I can get on to thinking about why I don't enjoy other perplexing literary icons... like Murakami, Bolaño, and Bulgakov... (There are only so many sleepless nights in a year.)"
"Reading Borges is a true pleasure, first and foremost. He ranks among the great short story writers of the 20th Century, and one of the most creative of all time.
As a writer, he truly embraces the patrimony of Western literature (and the Eastern literature accepted into it) and revels in it. While being firmly planted in the flow of tradition, its not surprising that he would be accepted by moderns. Indeed, one might think some of his work were Postmodern or Deconstructionist at first.
Though Borges first came to the world's attention sharing an award with Samuel Beckett, that is exactly the kind of writer who couldn't be more dissimilar to him.
Borges would certainly never be modern enough to abandon the concept of plot, quite the opposite: the more Byzantine the better. Borges never fails to entertain us, no matter what else he hopes to suggest.
If you haven't read "The Garden of Forking Paths," you are really missing out. From its classic Edgar Allen Poe-style beginning it will grab you. To give away any more would be unthinkable.
Interesting note- The English translation of "Forking Paths" was first published in English in "Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine." Maybe that's why the finest South American writer never got the Nobel Prize."
"Astounding in every way... One of the finest collections of short stories in existence! I first read most of these stories back in 1987 in an anthology called *Labyrinths* that was a selection of material from various Borges' books. Most of the stories that appear in *Fictions* also appear in *Labyrinths* but there are several good ones that don't, including the essay-stories 'The Approach to Al-Mu'tasim' and 'A Survey of the Works of Herbert Quain', and the gauncho tales 'The End' and 'The South' (apparently Borges' favourite among his own stories)...
Some of these stories I have now read three times. That's extremely unusual for me. Although I appreciate the excellence of 'Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius' I'm not entirely convinced that it's Borges' best story (as so many people claim) and I even wonder how many readers (i.e. potential fans) have been dissuaded from reading further after struggling with that particular tale right at the beginning of the volume... It reads like an entirely serious metaphysical essay, playful with its concepts, but lacking a certain momentum that the best Borges' stories have in abundance.
Much better are 'The Library of Babel', 'Death and the Compass', 'Funes, His Memory', 'The Lottery in Babylon', 'Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote' and (best of all in my view) 'The Circular Ruins'. 'The Circular Ruins' was the very first Borges story I ever read, maybe as long ago as 1983 or 1984, and back then I wasn't so enthralled. This is the third time I've read it. Oddly I like it more and more each time!"
"The Martel-Harper Challenge is based on a list of books that the Canadian author Yann Martel has sent to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper to read. I find this list fascinating, and I love the letters that Martel sends along with his book choices. He sends a new one every two weeks, which I think is a little unfair, as the Prime Minister is probably a busy man. But it doesn't really matter, since it doesn't seem like he even looks at them. He certainly does not bother to respond to the letters. But it gives the rest of us a good reason to stretch our horizons when it comes to reading. You can find more information on the website. I honestly have no idea what made me choose Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges, out of the entire list of books. I did not think that I had even heard of Borges, let alone read any of his stories. On that point, I was wrong. Fictions is a book of short stories, fantasies mostly, but not the kind of fantasy that I am prone to read. They are flights of fancy, literary plays, that I found really enjoyable, even though half the time I did feel a little lost. Martel does a much better job describing this book in his letter to Stephen Harper, so you should read that if you want a better description than the one I can give. One of my favorite quotes from the letter is describing a quote from the book: "That's intellectually droll, in a nerdy way." That quote basically sums up how I felt while reading the book. I would find something amusing, and feel kind of nerdy for "getting it", but at the same time I wasn't quite sure if I actually got it at all. Another good quote from the letter: "One of the games involved in Fictions is: do you get the references? If you do, you feel intelligent; if you don't, no worries, it's probably an invention, because much of the erudition in the book is invented." I found reading these stories very enjoyable, mainly for their subtle absurdity, but I am glad they were short stories only. I think that I would have gotten very bored reading an entire novel written in this way. There was probably only one story that really made me stop and say "Woah" when I had finished it - "Three Versions of Judas". That's also the only story that Martel felt made an intellectually thought-provoking point. The other stories are thought-provoking (at least I found them to be), but it is hard to find the point. Overall, this book stretched my reading boundaries, and I think it is worth reading for that purpose. Also, I realized that I had already read at least two of these short stories in English classes in the past. Obviously English teachers find them thought-provoking as well."
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