Collected Fictions

There are lots of criminals, cultists, conspirators, revolutionaries, and dictators in these stories, frequently cast into a sort of parody of a well-worn literary trope which Borges is treating with evident affection. There are only a few women here and there. Frequently his tales provide splendid examples of the storytelling maxim that one should get out early rather than late, sometimes in the middle of the main action leaving the reader in a state of turmoil wondering what exactly just happened. He also uses economy in depicting people and places in as few strokes as possible, sometimes taking just a few lines, or maybe a couple of paragraphs, to introduce and dispose of a subplot. It is well known how he has inspired many writers of speculative fiction by the way he blazed a trail through realms of uninhibited fancy. Not every single one is a masterpiece, but virtually all of them has some aspect that I would like to steal and use in my own stories.

I chanced upon this book during an impromptu street fair in Phoenixville, where I lived as a poor Maths student. I was, of course, familiar with the idea of Borges, and greatly enamored of the "Magical Realism" he popularized. However, I had not had the opportunity to read the man himself. Heedless of the price, I seized the book; in my zeal I paid scant attention to the vendor.

At this point I must suggest that the one star I've held back most likely reflects poorly on me, as opposed to the author. For most of the early half of the 20th century, Borges had little influence outside Argentina. For this reason it is understandable that he often relies so heavily upon context. Many of his stories do not, I think, age or travel well. Having little knowledge of 1940's Buenos Aires makes them, while short, somewhat interminable for me. This does not largely detract from the work as a whole, and I would not recommend attempting to skip such stories. Fortunately for those with the patience, the translator has provided much of the needed context in the notes.

Before I began the book, I tried to determine just how complete a collection it was. It quickly became apparent that what I had was not any standard edition, but some manner of pre-release copy. It had no dates; no publishing information at all, in fact. It seemed at first otherwise unremarkable, bearing no features more unusual than one would expect from a slightly early draft.

My favorite fictions, much as I expected, were fantastical. However, unlike many classical authors, the concepts expressed therein were utterly new to me. I had not seen their like reproduced in any modern works. "The Library of Babel" was utterly confounding in the most delightful way, and should be required reading. By that I mean the story, not the library itself; such a place would best be avoided if one values their sanity. "Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" was particularly inspiring. The style of writing, so matter of fact, lends the inherently ridiculous a sense of credibility. Other favorites include "The Other Death," "The Aleph," "Ulrikke," "There are More Things," "A Weary Man's Utopia," "The Disk," "The Book of Sand," "Blue Tigers," "The Zahir," and more.

There is little one can say of Borges that might not more efficiently get across by simply reading his work. It is that concise. Saying he chooses his words well is an understatement; A single word often unlocks the meaning of an entire story. I must confess that many of them surely escaped me. Anything I perceived as trivial, I suspect, had much more import than I realized.

At the end of "Shakespeare's Memory," where other editions insist the translator's note should begin, my copy instead has one more entry; a fantastical one. I cannot begin to discuss this prose with the slightest clarity. As Borges himself said, language requires shared experience, and there is nothing so inexplicable as what I read. It was paradoxically the shortest of all the stories, yet longer than any imaginable saga. It was as if all the preceding work had been condensed, so that the quality of quintessential Borges approached infinity. It has since become difficult to imagine anyone ever reading anything else; any other option is subsumed, a subset, of this. I began this work of inconceivable brilliance whilst riding the subway, and by the time I again became aware of my surroundings, I was many, many hours beyond my destination. The book was gone.

I was introduced to Jorge Luis Borges through a short story collection edited by Stephen R. Donaldson. The first story in this collection was a fantasy entitled “The Aleph” which told of a poet attempting to write an epic poem that would encompass all time and space. He was able to attempt this because he had stumbled upon a point in his basement where all space and time are located.
Intrigued by this strange dream, I kept my eyes out for anything I could find by Borges. I eventually came upon a dog-eared copy of Ficciones in a used book store. Here, I indulged in speculations of Judas Iscariot as the true Messiah, the invasion of a fictional reality into our universe, and a murder mystery taking place in parallel universes of forking paths.
Around this time, I had to move to another apartment, and fate decreed that my copy of Ficciones would not survive the move. The search for Borges’ fiction would have to continue. This longing would remain unfulfilled, until I stumbled quite by accident on this volume, The Collected Fictions; Translated by Andrew Hurley. Realizing what a treasure I had found, I sacrificed meaner appetites in order to purchase this volume for myself and deny it to some other poor, star struck soul.
Immediately upon purchasing it, rumor began to entangle me in a web of doubts. Rumors had it that this translation did a disservice to the incorruptible author of labyrinths. That this abomination was the doing of his harpy lover that, upon his death, betrayed his blind trust and proceeded to ruin his masterpieces in the English speaking world.
Somewhat discouraged, I recalled the peculiarities of translations. Often, the translation that has introduced us to an otherwise incomprehensible writer holds a special place in our souls. In particular, if that translation should make us fall in love with these babbling authors and their works. Reminicing over Burton Raffel’s translation of Beowulf, I recalled that I have read some of Andrew Hurley’s translation of another poet: Ruben Dario. I have had the pleasure of reading Dario’s prose in the original Castellano and recalled being satisfied with Hurley’s English interpretation.
Satisfied, I plunged into the Fictions of Borges. Throughout his body of prose, Borges often played with the theme of perception. Whether through the falsified accounts of true stories in A Universal History of Iniquity or the more hard-hitting reports in Ficciones and the Aleph, Borges accurately represented how the human mind can trick us into accepting a falsehood as reality. This perception also plays a role in the romanticizing of common, barbaric events. Throughout his prose, Borges recounts several accounts of gauchos and knife fighters that saturated Argentina’s literary culture much like cowboys stride into US culture.
From the middle towards the end of this volume, we get a more subtle Borges. In these writings, reality does not bend or pop like in the earlier prose, mostly because the universe is all ready deformed. His style here is exemplified in his short story ‘The Rose of Paracelsus’. Here, a man who would be Paracelsus’ disciple asks to behold a miracle: that Paracelsus should take a rose, burn it, and bring back the rose from its ashes. Paracelsus tells the man that he should have complete and blind faith, and when the man burns the rose and sees Paracelsus make no move to recover it from the ashes, he leaves a sadder and perhaps wiser man. Left alone, Paracelsus retrieves the ashes and whispers the Word to bring forth the Rose again.
Many will come to this book expecting Borges to do wonderful things with prose. Borges does not care to perform these rumors merely to satisfy the reader. The reader, trusting to his own senses, may attempt to reduce the prose to its base parts through analysis, but without trust, he or she will only leave disappointed, as if they had torn down a god and found broken, futile stone instead. Borges’ prose, however, will continue to withstand these dissections. Through the life breathed into it by the master himself, the prose will continue to blossom forth. Borges only invitation,that “the reader may find in my pages something that merits being remembered; in this world, beauty is so common.”