 |
I love Borges. That is,
the idea of Borges; someone so erudite, knowledgeable and arcane,
whose broadest of broad ranges of reading puts to shame the loudest braggart,
that he becomes mythological, a recursive figure in the fiction of those who
claim him as their antecedent, something that would probably tickle him pink.
He stands as a colossus astride the post-modernist traditions.
And you know how I love a
good post-modernist.
And yet…. And yet….
In the what might be the
definitive preface, certainly the one to which most reference is made in
criticism of the collection, André Maurois makes two allegations against
Borges. The first, perhaps one many a creative-writing undergraduate might have
been called upon to refute after finding it on his or her draft portfolio
submission*, is that a Borgesian story is “an absurd postulate developed to its
extreme logical consequences”. He stretches an idea to breaking point. The
second is that, despite the fact he’s read everything, Borges only ever seems
to treat us to a shallow skimming of his learning – “His erudition is not
profound ― he asks of it only flashes of lightning and ideas…” He’s not giving
us the full benefit of his knowledge, only feeding us what he thinks we can consume
without reflux.
Could it be that Borges is patronising me?
Okay, I can’t deny that
any reader of contemporary post-modern writers will doff a cap at Borges out of
sheer respect, as do I, but try as I might, it was often really difficult
to enjoy Labyrinths, and more often again, it proved prudent to trip
lightly past his many references, allusions and name-drops; anyone remotely
important to the story would get a fuller character treatment at some point.
Shanti Cabs, Kit from Tamil Nadu, and that guy who is trying to sell me
vermicular compost from India will all know that I’m not a big fan of short
stories. The unrewarded effort it takes to enter into the abortive world of a
short story makes any satisfaction derived pyrrhic. Having to actively fight to
get engaged makes the experience all the more frustrating. Enjoyment was often
the last thing I felt, if at all, reading this collection, and frankly, the
less said about how much I care for the Argentinian writing tradition the
better.
The collection has some
absolute gems of course, such as the Author of the Quixote, The Library of
Babel, The Lottery of Babylon, and even The Zahir, all of which I love. But in
another damning criticism, this edition is heavily front-loaded, with Borges’s
fictions arriving first, then his essays, and finally his parables. It starts
strongly, and for a lover of fiction and a bored reader of essays, peters out
weakly with a little self-indulgent fart of an elegy to himself.
In (I think) The God’s
Script, he writes:
You have wakened not out of sleep, but into a prior dream, and that dream lies within another, and so on, to infinity, which is the number of the grains of sand.
Reading Labyrinths was
certainly soporific in parts, and downright tedious in others. I’m elated and
deflated in equal measure, and I can’t help but dread all the future recursive
iterations of Borges in not only others’ works, but also my own. Pervasive and
invidious, I have to admit that the reality of Borges might not live up to my
idealisation, but one thing’s for certain – he won’t be forgotten in any great
hurry.
*Or was that just mine?
(Paid link)
Comments
Post a Comment