🦋 Borges the narrator
Gabriel Josipovici's essay on "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" has prompted me to go back and take a look at Borges' fictions (and to check out from the library the Collected Fictions, and to be confirmed in my impression of Hurley's translations as pitch-perfect, and to resolve to buy the volume.) One thing I'm noticing -- making very slow progress, with a lot of re-reading -- is that the  identification-with-other that I like so much in most of the fiction I read is not present so strongly in Borges. The narrators are identifiably Borges -- the only case I've noticed so far where this is untrue, "Man on Pink Corner," is a comparatively weak story, it feels like he is trying too hard. This is not a short-coming, precisely; in some stories like "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" or "The Shape of the Sword," it is exactly the right thing. But it it really noticeable, and striking, for instance in "The Library of Babel" -- the narrator cannot be a denizen of the Library, else how would he have any knowledge of the books and languages he names, but must instead be Borges imagining himself in that situation. I as a reader get to identify with Borges but not, or only at second hand, with the nameless man who wanders endlessly through the Library. It is a long time since I've read most of these stories, and I am still in the early part of the collection -- I will try and keep an eye out for whether this style of narration continues throughout.
posted evening of Tuesday, March 16th, 2010
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