Book Review—Collected Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges

Like a book hidden away in the shelves, Borges is more legend than reading; mentions of his name or work receives either vague recollections or an outright “huh?” This is in part due to his output being short stories in an era when the form is viewed as the lessor of creative fiction (ironic in a time of microwavable meals, sound bite news, and Twitter posts), but another is Borges’ unique approach to the form, fully accepting that its strength is its inherent formlessness.

He worked with standard literary styles, like the detective story or the fantasy tale, but infused these with unusual modes, never undermining, but always expanding beyond the surface. Take for example his version of the fantasy story in “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius”, where the fantasy world is not some far off place, but a spectre lurking in odd volumes that slowly usurps the narrator’s reality. Or his famous “The Garden of Forking Paths”, an espionage tale mixed in with a novel where all possible realities exist and intertwine. In yet another (“Three Versions of Judas”) Borges provides a scholarly article about a fictional theologian, Nils Runeberg and his controversial idea of Judas as God’s incarnation in the world, made totally man “to the point of iniquity”, his sacrifice being an eternity of infamy.

Each of these tales, with their mixing of reality and literature, the mundane and the obscure, reveals why Borges’ Collected Fictions is an assortment of perfectly formed imaginings from the master of the formless infinity of literature.

Andreas

Book Review—The Writing Life by David Malouf

Malouf’s writing career spans many decades and numerous highly praised works. In this volume he shares his thoughts on other writers and, perhaps more interestingly, the role of reading in life and the writer in society.

Covering authors as diverse as Mann, Hugo, Proust, Kafka, Shakespeare and Homer, Malouf provides intriguing personal readings of their works and highlights unique perspectives. He reveals Kafka not as the surrealist, but as someone “who works so close to the facts of his own life”, and wrestles the enormity of the Iliad into a manageable, human work with relevance to 21st century life. The Shakespeare article is particularly interesting, as Malouf traces both the evolution of perception of Shakespeare in literary circles but also Shakespeare’s development in his treatment of material, shifting from performance to shared experience with the audience that makes his plays the most revered in the Western tradition.

Many of these essays are not just valuable from a critical perspective, but a living one, revealing Malouf as someone who absorbs literature in order to live a fuller life.  These life-centric readings provide the volume with its greatest interest, and several pieces in particular exemplify the link between literature and life. But in opposition it also reveals the disconnect writing imposes on writers, where their social, talking selves are in opposition to, and occasionally in conflict with, their brooding, writing selves.

A volume of unique readings and personal reflections, The Writing Life is a fascinating record of a writer and, more importantly, a reader.
Andreas