The Aleph and Other Stories 1933-1969

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The master of making great literature of great literature .......2005-01-11

There is no Borges like Borges and Borges is his only Borges. In these tales one becomes acquainted with a mysterious mixture of concepts and conjectures, of footnotes and findings which combine to move the mind and soul to pure love of reading.The title story alone ' The Aleph' contains in it a hint of containing everything, and yet the finding of it leads us not only to the Kabbalah but to a certain very specific cellar in the imagination of Borges. All the games and tricks of mind cannot conceal from us how wisely and wonderingly this great man has read and written.
Who reads this book touches the work of one of the great literary geniuses of mankind. The pleasure is all the reader's.

Labyrinths: Selected Stories and Other Writings (New Directions Paperbook, 186)

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Writings of a great reader
Enjoy Borges
The place to start with Borges
Timeless literature
Satisfying estrangement for restless, unsold minds

Labyrinths: Selected Stories and Other Writings (New Directions Paperbook, 186)
Jorge Luis Borges
Manufacturer: New Directions Publishing Corporation
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0811200124

Amazon.com

If Jorge Luis Borges had been a computer scientist, he probably would have invented hypertext and the World Wide Web.

Instead, being a librarian and one of the world's most widely read people, he became the leading practitioner of a densely layered imaginistic writing style that has been imitated throughout this century, but has no peer (although Umberto Eco sometimes comes close, especially in Name of the Rose).

Borges's stories are redolent with an intelligence, wealth of invention, and a tight, almost mathematically formal style that challenge with mysteries and paradoxes revealed only slowly after several readings. Highly recommended to anyone who wants their imagination and intellect to be aswarm with philosophical plots, compelling conundrums, and a wealth of real and imagined literary references derived from an infinitely imaginary library.

Customer Reviews:

Writings of a great reader.......2007-09-09

In "How To Read a Book" Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren describe the fourth level of reading. Synoptical reading challenges the reader who, having carefully and thoroughly understood several individual works, strives to hear the conversation of their ensemble. "Labyrinths" brings us the dreamlike reflections of Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges's profoundly synoptical reading. Borges heard the conversation of writers across cultures, centuries, languages, genres. Then he came back to outline over and over the one nearly infinite and unattainable truth in these stories, essays, and parables.

Yet Borges's writings remain humble and personal. With the voice of a shy, erudite uncle, Borges recounts magical reveries that came to him deep in the stacks of some dim basement of the library. Throughout the text the reader feels at once the quiet loneliness of the bookworm, the presence of the immortal, and the terrible portents in the twilight rustling of leaves.

Enjoy Borges.......2007-01-10

A nice light book for travel if you do not need all his works in one volume.

The place to start with Borges.......2006-09-18

First, a memory: at the age of 19, I walked into a college elective course on Latin American literature, and was presented with a syllabus which included several works by Gabriel Garcia-Marquez, Carlos Fuentes, Manuel Puig, Julio Cortazar, and Jorge Luis Borges. We were to begin with Borges, which became a life-changing discovery.

Since then, Borges has come to stand alongside Vladimir Nabokov as my favorite writer; they are two people whose writing I couldn't imagine not knowing. And LABYRINTHS is the place to begin - it's where I started, and once a year or so, it's the collection I most readily return to.

Other reviewers have done an excellent job of summing up his style, so instead of rehashing, I'll zero in on some favorites: "Death And The Compass," which blends Borges' vast knowledge of global histories and religions with his love of pulp and genre conventions; the end results are a metaphysical mystery like no others. Or "The Sect Of The Phoenix," which - in the most simplistic analysis - is a birds-and-bees discourse undertaken with unusual originality, and enhanced with anthropological allegories.

Other high-water marks include "A New Refutation Of Time," "The Garden Of Forking Paths," the brief "Borges And I" and "Pierre Menard, Author Of The Quixote." I would note that there's not a false moment to be found here, and after dozens of re-readings, I still enjoy finding new secrets hidden within these crystalline fictions, parables and essays.

Anyone with a love of literature should get to know Borges.

-David Alston

Timeless literature.......2006-07-29

This is a very fine collection, which in its condensed form manages to distill the essence of Borges' writing. The book contains selected fictions and essays of the great Argentine writer. A brief preface by Andre Maurois serves as a useful introduction to Borges.

In the short fictions and the essays that follow, the reader gets to freely partake in the world of Borges; all of his great themes and motifs are here - labyrinths, mirrors ("mirrors and copulations are abominable, because they increase the number of men"), time distortion (he was intrigued by Zeno's paradox since his childhood days), dreams in which characters are actors in others' dreams, infinite libraries that contain exhaustive sets of linguistic permutations...

Borges' writing style is precise and taut, almost scientific; one does not find extended, florid passages in his prose. The short fictions are not so much about poetic description (though Borges also wrote poetry) - instead the beauty of the writing lies in its ideas and their wonderful intelligence. Every word seems to have its specific function - this is doubly true because toward mid-life Borges lost his eyesight. He composed his wonderful thoughts and stories in his head and then had them dictated. For the average reader this means that to read Borges requires some effort and the full capture of one's attention - these are not writings that you breeze through, read once and then forget about. The enjoyment lies in the contemplation. Borges was a genuine `man of letters', probably one of the most widely read and erudite people in the recent history of literary discourse. He was especially fond of Berkeley and Schopenhauer and the philosophy of idealism is a topic that he found immensely interesting (this is evident in many of his stories). Today, the writings of Borges are not only treasures to lovers of literature - he is also highly regarded among some contemporary philosophers and scientists. Dan Dennett has written that while Borges is not traditionally considered a philosopher (he once defined philosophy as "that organization of the essential perplexities of man") in his brief meditations, he has given to philosophy some of the most fascinating thought-experiments. Dennett makes extensive use of `The Library of Babel' in particular. Oliver Sacks has often quoted from and referred to `Funes the Memorious' in his discussions on mnemonists.

"Labyrinths" is not by any means a complete collection of Borges' work - in fact, some of my favorite Borges pieces are not included here (`The South', `The Other Death'. `The Aleph' to name a few) but it is still an excellent resource. The translations are of high quality and for a reader not familiar with Borges this makes the perfect first book to buy.

Borges was truly a giant of South American and for that matter, world literature. Italo Calvino was right to be thoroughly exasperated that Borges never received the Nobel; he famously said that having given the Nobel to Marquez before Borges was tantamount to giving it to the son before the father. This is timeless literature, by which I mean that it belongs to a rare class of books which do not have an `expiry date' - one can keep returning to them, over and over, throughout life, reading and re-reading and never exhausting. I often imagine Borges as a kind of eternal figure - one thinks of him still inhabiting his beloved libraries, blind to the world and dreaming of labyrinths and mirrors that reflect infinity.

Satisfying estrangement for restless, unsold minds.......2005-10-17

I imagine in my mind what it would be like to have coffee with Luis Borges on a Sunday afternoon. Borges would be wearing a suit and have little cakes on hand, cane leaning on his armrest, as if nothing out of the ordinary were about to occur.

Labyrinths is a useful first book to kick off a lifetime investigation into Borges' writings. Borges is truly original as an author as much for his intent as for his achieving it. Not quite Magic Realist, not quite Existentialist nor Kafkan: no one is Borges' equal in taking established assumptions and turning them into curious, elaborate, eruditely-supported flashing crossroads that defy simplification.

Even the most unassuming essays like "The Fearful Sphere of Pascal," a subtle historical resketching, are characteristically erudite, yet sticky and complicate the subject irresistibly from your first reading onward. The prickly thorns reach out for your existing education on the subject and are designed to flesh out the glaring inconsistencies you will have read on the subject.

The Garden of Forking Paths is an example of prime Borges storytelling at work. The story itself is a ruse. The first reading-through is not the time you are affected most by Borges, but rather only AFTER you have put the book down, when the Borges' physics of Being begin to gnaw at your world of compact, necessary daily conveniences, even in 2005 when we really ought to be intimately familiar with his universe by now. I think ultimately Borges sets tiny mind bombs set to detonate at exactly the time you seek to superimpose a Newtonian universe upon one of his stories, and ultimately, later, when you seek to superimpose order upon your own human experience. The entrance seems the same, but it has clearly moved by the time you exit the story. You become part of the puzzle, and that is the bedazzling signature of Borges, and his unassailable virtue. Everything solid in the universe of daily lived experience becomes compost and peacefully unsettled, as it originally was, before we came along to fix it up like morticians just before the funeral.

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Ficciones
Charming and delighful
Deserved, definitive but tedious
Dreaming of a weaver of dreams
An important but imperfect distillation of Borges' life

Borges: A Life
Edwin Williamson
Manufacturer: Viking Adult
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0670885797
Release Date: 2004-08-05

Book Description

Short story writer, essayist, and poet Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) revolutionized the literature of Latin America almost single-handedly and left a legion of readers and admirers worldwide.

Based on an unprecedented range of interviews and on research into previously unknown or unavailable resources, this is the first biography in any language to encompass the entire span of Borges's life and work. In Borges, Edwin Williamson brings to life the little known human side of the writer: his ancestral roots in Argentina, his relations with family and friends, his passions and despairs, and the evolution of his political ideas. By correlating this new biographical information with Borges's literary texts, Williamson also reconstructs the dynamics of his inner world—the conflicts, desires, and obsessions that drove the man and shaped his work. This major new study finally unlocks the mysteries that have obscured the life of Borges. The result is a compelling and often poignant portrait that will radically transform our views of this modern master.

Customer Reviews:

Ficciones.......2007-02-12

It could be said that Jorge Luis Borges, one of the most important writers of the 20th Century, was also one of its most interesting individuals, a person who led an uneventful and yet strangely fascinating life. Anyone who has read his works has probably been charmed by this man who so kindly invites the reader into his own world of sparkling erudition and ceaseless invention. Little is there to wonder, then, that so many books have been written about him. Borges: A Life, manages to be both the most detailed and problematic of such books.

JLB was characteristically insightful and concise when he wrote in his own biography of Evaristo Carriego: "That someone may want to awaken in someone else memories that only belonged to a third person, is an obvious paradox. To carry out that paradox with nonchalance, is the naïve purpose of every biography." Edwin Williamson, apparently unsatisfied with the difficulty posed by that paradox, has raised the challenge. With this book he has set out to show the world the secret impulses behind Borges's works, to explain how even the slightest event in his life dictated everything he wrote down to the last comma, to discover things Borges would never have guessed. As one would expect, Williamson prefers psychology to logic, and non-sequiturs to arguments.

First of all, there is Williamson's habit of inferring something that in little probability happened and for what there is little or no evidence, and then taking that assumption as a hard fact throughout book. For example, since Borges used daggers as a recurrent symbol, and since in his short-story "The Maker" the main character's father gives his son a dagger to stand up to someone who disrespected him, Williamson is convinced Borges's father actually gave his son a dagger when he was a small child, too. (Apparently, it is perfectly rational to suppose an educated man would give his doted son - who happens to be short-sighted, sickly, and bookish - a dagger to "have it out" with school bullies.) This "episode" is then used as one of the keys to crack Borges's work.

Another of Williamson's earth-shaking discoveries is that Borges tried to write a novel in his thirties. Twice. He proves this with an irrefutable syllogism:

1- Borges said that he had been planning "The Congress", a long short-story published in 1971, for some 30 or 40 years.
2- In 1932, he had published his first review of an apocryphal book, "An Approach to Al-Mu'tasim", a text which, like "The Congress", dealt with pantheism.
3- Therefore, that review was originally a novel Borges struggled to write.

No other explanation is given: Q.E.D. The very important fact that "Al-Mu'tasim" was the first of the many faux reviews that would become a Borges trademark, that he himself described it as "both a deceit and a pseudo-essay", that he declared several times he was not a fan of novels, that in his own autobiography he doesn't mention ever trying to write one, and that pantheism is a recurrent theme in his works, are all some of the many things to which Williamson chooses to turn a blind eye. Furthermore, since in "Al-Mu'tasim" two editions of the book are described, he infers that, after failing once, Borges tried to write his "novel" a second time, also to no avail. To top it all off, he claims this failed novel was supposed to be a "masterpiece that would justify his whole career as a writer". He then uses this useful information to interpret the author's later works. This sort of topsy-turvy reasoning pervades the whole book. The least evidence there is for assuming something actually happened, the more importance and attention is given to it. Borges's life, it seems, revolved around the implausible.

Although Williamson does occasionally offer enlightening comments on some texts, he mostly sticks to ludicrous literary interpretations (who would have thought "Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius", of all stories, "evinces Borges's fears of ending up as a reflection of his father"?) and even indulges in weird, far-fetched orthographic cabbalism, like devoting half a page to prove how the name Emma Zunz, a name JLB once said he chose because it was "so insignificant, so meaningless", actually "functions as ideogram of the kind of solipsistic labyrinth in which Borges imagined himself to be trapped..."

Besides the gaps of logic, there are important gaps in a few other areas: Borges's estrangement from life-long friend Bioy Casares is just faintly alluded to, and nothing is said about Maria Kodama's alleged part in it. In fact, one would hardly guess from reading this book what a controversial figure Kodama - who has spent most of the last two decades suing liberally and fending off accusations - actually is, since Williamson gives such a romanticized portrait of her.

All that being said, however, it must be admitted that, when it sticks to the facts, this can truly be a very illuminating piece of work. Williamson has spent nearly ten years of his life reading and re-reading piles of documents and interviewing dozens of people to gather as much information as possible -and it shows. The amount of detail provided here surpasses any previous book on the subject. Therefore, if we judge biographies solely by the amount of research behind them or by the audacity of their assertions, Borges: A Life will seem truly impressive. The problem is that, in my opinion, a biography is supposed to be more than scholarly work or a provoking string of theories; it is supposed to be the picture of a man. And Williamson, whose garrulous prose frequently descends to cheap drama, illogical hypothesis and contorted psychology interpretations, is the exact opposite of the lucid, succinct, elegant and witty Borges -who, it should be noted, never had more than contempt for psychological literature in general. I don't think the irony would have escaped him. Indeed, sometimes Williamson comes off as the sort of writer Borges would have created to poke fun at everything he thought ridiculous in modern biographies; an apocryphal author weaving delusions about a weaver of dreams.

I would recommend those who are interested on the life of the great Argentinean author to check out his own "Autobiographical Essay", Yates's biography, or, if able to read in Spanish, Vaccaro's recent Vida y Literatura and Bioy Casares's priceless "Borges". Considering the amount of books, essays and bios on JLB published every year, and the number of documents still unavailable to the public, I suppose a "definite" biography is still a long way off. But there is obviously nothing preventing us from rebuilding on our own, little by little and reading upon reading, that perplexing labyrinth that was the life of this great man.

Charming and delighful.......2006-09-16

From his early days as an Ultraista to the latter years when he served at the helm of Argentina's most prestigious library, Borges, as defined by Williamson, was himself a work in progress, his life that of a book under constant revision, even though the cover remained the same.

Williamson's take on "Georgie" is sincere, playing to the sympathies of the reader. In his attempt to flesh out Borges the man versus Borges the writer, Williamson may have proven once and for all that Borges' life was the real work of fiction.

Deserved, definitive but tedious.......2006-04-14

I have read all of Borges' ficciones multiple times in translation and I consider him one of the most important writers of the last century. That's easy: there is a case to be made that he is, or will eventally be seen as, the most important writer - his familiarity with ancient texts, islamic matters and philosophical puzzles makes his stories seem far more contemporary, as we move further into the 21st century, than the works of authors to whom postwar scholars usually award that level of accolade.

I found this book to provide useful critical insights that greatly enhanced my understanding of Borges' work. That said, it was awfully ironic that an author whose works rarely exceeded 10 pages in length and who frequently made fun of pedantic academic men and their works is memorialized by a biography of this length and detail. It seemed as if the governing principle of the book was to incorporate every scrap of paper the author had found concerning Borges's life, and he was not to be deterred. I would have thought the first 150 pages or so, covering a period during which none of his stories were written, could have been condensed to about 50, and that is being generous; Borges himself might have done it in 5 to 10. Is there not a biography to be written of Borges that narrates events with the same economy as his own stories reflect? He loved, the woman was important to him, the love was reciprocated for a time, but ultimately the woman did not maintain the relationship - ok, that is good to know, and certainly the hunt for the impact of the relationship in the stories is justifiably at the heart of the biography, but must we be presented with entire chapters devoted to each year of the relationship? The detail adds little to an understanding of the stories; it is neither novel nor particularly entertaining; and, as noted, such level of detail is fundamentally at odds with the aesthetics of the subject of the biography. If there is ever another edition, a severe edit would be of great assistance to future readers.

Dreaming of a weaver of dreams.......2005-06-12

Borges famously wrote that all he'd been was a weaver of dreams. Williamson's life of Borges shows him to have dreamt copiously through his long existence. He was a wreckless public speaker who loved to drop bombs in interviews and was unafraid to court controversy. He started his literary life as an ensign of the avant-garde and a bolshevik sympathiser. He morphed into a cultural nationalist, an admirer of the cut-throats of the barriadas, the knife-men of the Pampas and of old-fashioned milongas and tangos (he even wrote a few). He was remarkably clear-sighted about the awfulness of Argentinian fascism, headed by the indestructible General Peron and was a philo-semite. He later endorsed several dictatorships both in Argentina and abroad because he regarded them as the lesser evil (and he might have been right, although it probably cost him his Nobel prize). But he opposed the torture and vanishings of the Dirty War and he decried the manipulation of popular sentiment that General Galtieri achieved when he chose to invade the Malvinas (Falklands). He ended his life as mystical agnostic and chose to die in his second fatherland, Geneva.

Having read several Borges biographies I was surprised at the considerable links between his life (especially his sentimental life) and his work. Williamson teases the meaning of many obscure lines in Borges's work, by showing how they emanated from specific experiences, usually negative. This approach, while frequently enlightening, occasionally has its limitations. This biographer attempted to show that virtually everything Borges ever wrote , said or thought (at least until he met Maria Kodama, in the early 1970s) was a consequence of a battle in his head, between his mother ("the sword of honor") and his father ("the dagger of the compadrito"). While this framework can be enlightening, Williamson is so exhaustingly repetitive at flogging this horse, that the reader ends up feeling rather like someone who is accosted in a bar by a tiresome drunk who just goes on and on about some pet peeve. An insight is not a worldview, Mr. Williamson! Also, some of the chapters repeat themselves almost word for word, as if though the author had forgotten what he wrote before. The reader, alas, like Funes the Memorious, cannot forget and is therefore tempted to gloss over these bits. I was also surprised not to see any reference to Naipaul's essay "The Return of Eva Peron". Naipaul met Borges, interviewed him and also reviewed his work in a very lucid fashion. Surely the thoughts of one of the greatest living writers about one of his predecessors would have been of some interest?

The conclusion is that Borges definitive life in English (such as Boyd's life of Nabokov) remains to be written. While that happens, this is a better place to start than most. I give the book four stars because it has rekindled my old love for the Master's work. I think I'll dip into it in the next few weeks.

An important but imperfect distillation of Borges' life.......2004-12-02

Edwin Williamson turns Borges' own oft employed techniques of psychoanalysis and detective work on his subject in an effort to link events in Borges' life with Borges' literary creation. He seizes on several themes, honor, rebellion, alienation, love, nationalism, and responsibility to forge these links.

The results are decidedly mixed for Mr. Williamson sometimes seems to omit detail for conjecture without justifying his viewpoint. The author may make too much of some of the linked themes here, for sometimes he seems to be straining to force circumstances in Borges' life to correspond to a story or poem. That is not to deny the clearly articulated autobiographical nature of Mr. Borges' writing. But Borges favored the aforementioned themes and a well-known and oft-used set of symbols---tigers, mirrors, daggers, books, and so on---throughout his career and did not necessarily employ a specific theme because of a particular event.

Borges' political philosophies and missteps are crucial elements as are his early artistic leanings toward the avant garde. His boldness in those areas contrasts harshly with his sometimes weak personality, most notably demonstrated by his nearly lifelong deference to his mother (who lived to be 99) and his repeated failing at establishing and maintaining a meaningful, normal long-term romantic relationship until he was elderly.

Whether one quibbles with Mr. Williamson's presentation, one has to admire the attention to detail and the effort he has poured into "Borges: A Life." Mr. Williamson has consulted with an array of sources, reviewed myriad documents, and perhaps more crucially, interviewed many who knew Borges, especially Maria Kodoma, his companion and eventually his wife. Yet while he often seems to leave no stone unturned, he otherwise glosses over other significant events such as Borges' estrangement from his remaining family after his mother died or his separation from literary compatriots and collaborators.

As a previous reviewer here noted---and I agree---there is some degree of repetition employed in this biography, perhaps a tad too much. At times the book drags a bit and in other spots it does compel one to stay up a bit too late. All in all, this biography meets its stated goal of examining Borges' literary output in context of his life. But the result of applying this lens is that Borges the person does not fully come into view and the characterizations may make him appear more ineffectual and enigmatic that he actually was.

I support the notion that this work will remain an important but imperfect distillation of Borges' life but suspect that some scholarly missive will one day supplant "Borges: A Life" as the definitive biography of Borges.

Binge Thinking: A Different Kind of College Hangover

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Binge Thinking is a must have for parents, professors, and students!
A book like Binge Thinking is long overdue!
A must read for those going into college or already in college!
Anyone interested in a better understanding of life should buy this book!
I Wish that I knew What I know Now, When I was Younger

Binge Thinking: A Different Kind of College Hangover
Ph.D., Zachary M. White , and Ph.D., Gino D. Borges
Manufacturer: iUniverse, Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Book Description

Incoming college freshmen often hear that college will be the best time of their lives. With new friends, new activities, and new independence, college thrusts young people into a challenging yet exciting situation. But in the midst of entering this thrilling world, many students struggle with the phenomenon known as "binge thinking."

After years of research as students, graduate students, and professors, authors Dr. Gino Borges and Dr. Zachary White discovered that the majority of college students obsess over the following issues:

. Loneliness
. The desire for recognition
. The need to belong
. Dissatisfaction
. Finding a perfect relationship and an ideal job

Binge thinking produces an excess of thought that, if not appropriately treated, overshadows the highly publicized positive aspects of the college experience.

In Binge Thinking, you'll meet five fictional students suffering from binge thinking. You'll also meet a mysterious and wise character that gives each student a real-world remedy for real-life thinking hangovers. Binge Thinking is the perfect companion for understanding the thoughts you will inevitably experience during your college years.

Customer Reviews:

Binge Thinking is a must have for parents, professors, and students!.......2005-09-08

I graduated from college this past summer. After reading Binge Thinking, I found that the stories told in the book are true to the real college experience. I wish I had the opportunity to read Binge Thinking prior to or during my four years, and I know Binge Thinking would have been a helpful tool for my parents as well. This book provides a better way of looking at tough times in college and reassures students that their feelings are not out of the ordinary. Also, I wish I had DB to help me through college, he is so smart!

A book like Binge Thinking is long overdue!.......2005-08-25

I found Binge Thinking to be especially poignant since I am a recent college graduate. For me, it was easy to relate to several of the characters and their predicaments because I faced many of the same issues during my college years.
The best thing about the book is that it can, and should, be read by several different groups of people. It can not only be enjoyed by future and current college students but it is also a good informational tool for parents to gain exposure to some of the things their child may be experiencing while away at school. I would also recommend Binge Thinking to all college graduates, like myself, as I found it to be helpful in understanding some of the thoughts and feelings that I experienced in college.
This book can ease some of the anxieties that we face before, during, and after college.

A must read for those going into college or already in college!.......2005-08-20

I just finished reading Binge Thinking. It was more
than I expected--it was actually fun to read! As a
college student, I binged on all of the thinking
binges they talked about. I wish someone gave me this
book when I was in college. As a teacher, I highly
recommend Binge Thinking for anyone going into college
or already in college. It's the only book I've read
that talks about what really goes on in and OUT of the
classroom!

Anyone interested in a better understanding of life should buy this book!.......2005-08-18

This book has brought clarity and understanding to a complex topic. The chronic over thinking of not only college students but of virtually all modern day individuals is so universal that it is often considered "normal". Dr.'s Borges and White have created a language and thought process for people to identify and talk about the very nature of over thinking and why it can cause so much harm to your mental well being. As products of such modern affluence and choice we often take for granted that our minds have evolved to handle all the complexity and choice that we do have. That couldn't be further from the truth! What we need is a language and thought process to help us talk about our abundance of choice and that is what Dr.'s Borges and White have done.

Anyone who is interested in their mental well being and for a better understanding of the very world we live in should buy this book immediately. They will then understand just why they have been afflicted with those most "normal" thoughts of inadaquecy and unhappiness that every one of us walks through life with.

I Wish that I knew What I know Now, When I was Younger.......2005-07-26

I wish that Dr.'s White and Borges would have written this book ten years ago. Four years of undergraduate work and three years working with college admissions has taught me that the obsticals identified in "Binge Thinking" are universal symptoms of the real college hangover.

If you haven't experienced the sinario's in this book, then chances are someone you know has or will. The good doctors have hit the nail on the head and vocalized many of the fears, experiences, and trails that I ran into as a wide eyed freshman. A couple while sitting in Dr. White's classes. (ha)

Most of the situations are unavoidable, but after reading "Binge Thinking," one has a better chance dealing with anxieties and obsticals as they appear.

"Binge Thinking" is a tool that any prospective student, parent or individual should carry in thier arrsenel when entering collegate life. The language and lessons are accessible to audiences of all ages. So much so, that I'm ordering a copy for my brother and cousin who just graduated high school!

Happy Reading.

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english?
The path you are to take is endless
Interesting collection of ideas
Maker of Stories
Borges and the 'Aleph"

Aleph and Other Stories
Jorge Luis Borges
Manufacturer: Plume
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 052548275X

Book Description

Full of philosophical puzzles and supernatural surprises, these stories contain some of Borges's most fully realized human characters. With uncanny insight he takes us inside the minds of an unrepentant Nazi, an imprisoned Mayan priest, fanatical Christian theologians, a woman plotting vengeance on her father's “killer,” and a man awaiting his assassin in a Buenos Aires guest house. This volume also contains the hauntingly brief vignettes about literary imagination and personal identity collected in The Maker, which Borges wrote as failing eyesight and public fame began to undermine his sense of self.

Customer Reviews:

english?.......2007-06-10

I was trying to get this book in Spanish,the language it was written .I didn't .

The path you are to take is endless.......2007-03-17

Trying to full describe the writings of Jorge Luis Borges is like trying to explain exactly why Leonardo da Vinci's art still captivates. The man wrote works of art.

"The Aleph and Other Stories" includes two different books of Borges', very different in their styles -- one is rich and epic, while the other is sort of short and quirky. But this collection is a shining example of why people enjoy Borges -- magical, rich in language, and lets us glimpse the minds of anything and anyone he can conjure up.

The title story involves a sort of fictional version of Borges, who makes regular pilgrimages to the house of a woman he loved, and encounters her slightly nuts first cousin Daneri, who is composing a horrible epic poem describing the whole world. When Daneri's house is threatened, he reveals how he's composed the poem -- the Aleph, which he discovered as a child, and he allows Borges to catch a glimpse of... everything.

The other stories have tales of heretics and holy men, of a man's last days awaiting an assassin's bullet, of a girl who coldly seeks revenge for her father, and the Zahir (the opposite of the Aleph), which can cause an all-encompassing obsession in the one who sees it, until they shut out reality.

And in the second book, he spins up a long string of very, VERY short stories (some only a paragraph). Some are musings on his toes, and nothing much more. But there are also brief stories of startling depth, such as God speaking to Dante and the "Divine Comedy's" leopard, and assuring them of their literary immortality.

The main flaw with this collection is that it's basically split into two very dissimilar styles -- some of them are short and relatively plain, while the others are dense pockets of philosophy. In fact, all the stories in the first portion of the book are based on the idea of shared experiences and infinite time, where there are no "new" experiences but only repetition.

And Borges wraps these stories in lush, digified prose that takes a little while to wade through, but the richness of the words he uses is worth it ("every generation of mankind includes four honest men who secretly hold up the universe and justify it"). And his writing takes on many different people's selves -- he even makes readers squirm by taking us into the mind of a loyal Nazi.

It's almost like another world, Borgeworld, which is almost like ours, but where magical items are hidden in the cellars, soldiers are forgotten, the Minotaur plays in his maze, and God dreams of mortal lives. The most entrancing foray into Borgeworld is "The Immortal," about a Roman soldier who goes searching for a city of immortals, and finds an ancient poet who seems very familiar.

"The Aleph and Other Stories" is a brilliant collection of Borges' exquisite stories. Magical and gritty, beautiful and haunting -- this collection should be cherished.

Interesting collection of ideas.......2007-01-03

This collection of short stories covers a huge array of concepts and ideas, ranging from history and religion, through philosophy to science. One recurring theme involves taking a well known story or idea and looking at it from a different angle or viewpoint.

The translation is well handled and the translator's notes are designed to give a background to place names or people that a non Argentinean would not necessarily know without getting in the way of the text.

This is the first of JLB's books that I have read; I will certainly look out more.

Maker of Stories.......2006-06-29

I was surprised to find when I picked up this book that it is not the same selection of stories as the earlier published THE ALEPH AND OTHER STORIES 1933-1969, translated by Norman Thomas di Giovanni in collaboration with Borges himself. Instead, it is a translation of two volumes published by Borges in Argentina, THE ALEPH and THE MAKER (EL HACEDOR), translated by Andrew Hurley.

As for the stories themselves, I can say only that they are some of the most magical tales written in the last hundred years, perhaps even ever. Stories like "The Immortal," "Story of the Warrior and the Captive Maiden," "The Zahir," and "The Aleph" are worthy of being read over and over again.

Since I already have these stories in other form by other translators, I wanted to determine how good Hurley's translation is. To that end, I'll compare some of my favorite passages. Let's start with the title story in the Hurley translation:

"Under the step, toward the right, I saw a small iridescent sphere of almost unbelievable brightness. At first I thought it was spinning; then I realized that the movement was an illusion produced by the dizzying spectacles inside it. The Aleph was probably two or three centimeters in diameter, but universal space was contained inside it, with no diminution in size. Each thing (the glass surface of a mirror, let us say) was inifinite things, because I could clearly see it from every point in the cosmos."

Here di Giovanni with the same paragraph:

"On the back part of the step, toward the right, I saw a small iridescent sphere of almost unbelievable brilliance. At first I thought it was revolving; then I realized that this movement was an illusion created by the dizzying world it bounded. The Aleph's diameter was probably little more than an inch, but all space was there, actual and undiminished. Each thing (a mirror's face, let us say) was infinite things, since I saw it distinctly from every angle of the universe."

I'd say that Hurley did a workmanlike job, but I like di Giovanni, especially with "the dizzying world it bounded," much more idiomatic than "the dizzying spectacles inside it." Now here's Hurley with "A Biography of Tadeo Isidoro Cruz":

"As Cruz was fighting in the darkness (as his body was fighting in the darkness), he began to understand. He realized that one destiny is no better than the next and that every man must accept the destiny he bears inside himself."

From di Giovanni's "The Life of Tadeo Isidoro Cruz":

"Cruz, while he fought in the dark (while his body fought in the dark), began to understand. He understood that one destiny is no better than another, but that every man must obey what is within him."

Again, I accept the Hurley, but prefer di Giovanni."Every man must obey" is simpler, more idiomatic than "every man must accept the destiny."

One complaint I have against both translations is that neither bothers to provide translations of quotations from the Latin. This is particularly disturbing in the case of "Story of the Warrior and the Captive Maiden," in which two four-line excerpts are taken from a Latin tomb of a Lombard warrior that turn out to be quite interesting. I finally had to turn to Thomas Hodgkin's THE BARBARIAN INVASIONS OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE to find the whole epitaph Englished.

In summary, it is better to read Hurley than not to read Borges at all; but, given the chance, I would prefer di Giovanni by a slight margin.

Borges and the 'Aleph".......2005-10-28

It was as if in the writing of many stories he was seeking to conceal the fact that he had only one story to write. And in that one story was contained the essence of all stories, so that to read it and understand it was to become the story itself.
So too with the Aleph the single letter in which the whole of the Universe is contained. Once one finds it and reads it and loses oneself in it one has read all stories and need not read any other again.
Yet when the other stories come, and they do come, and they have letters and shapes 'The Aleph' itself does not know,they remind us that basically the 'Aleph ' is at best a metaphor, and in its heart of hearts ,unreal.
All of us today are readers of Borges. And as such we are contained in the Aleph of his work.
But he is far away and above us all.
For he is the great literary genius whose works will be read and reread.
And it is fair to say that the letter 'Aleph' alone is not enough to contain him.

The Aleph and other stories, 1933-1969,: Together with commentaries and an autobiographical essay

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Excellent introduction to Borges

The Aleph and other stories, 1933-1969,: Together with commentaries and an autobiographical essay
Jorge Luis Borges
Manufacturer: E. P. Dutton
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Latin American | World Literature | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Spanish | World Literature | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Customer Reviews:

Excellent introduction to Borges.......2003-02-23

This collection is an excellent introduction to Borges, and clearly shows how he revolutionized the short story and became the pater familias of a new genre classification.

"The Aleph"--Like most of his stories, this one is brief but packs a lot of information into its short length. (For those who don't read outside of SF, imagine a J.G. Ballard condensed novel with more connections and a higher sense of the fantastic. Hmm, that was a worthless description. It is hard to find a match for Borges in the genre, because he was always succinct, and could never have survived in the dog-eat-dog world of pay by word.) The gimmick is simple--the aleph is to space what eternity is to time--but the method by which the author discovers it is unusual. I like Borges because his approach to a fantastic concept is unlike any found in the genre. Genre writing seems to emphasize the gimmick, in mainstream writing it is simply one part of the landscape against which the characters are placed. Only in Borges do all elements seem equal, similar in concept to his own aleph, to return in a style similar to Borges himself.

"Streetcorner Man"--A first-person tale of one night in the barrio, when the ones who talk big get their comeuppance by the quiet ones. OK, but I like my stories to have a little something more.

"The Approach to aI-Mu'tasim"--A review of a fictional book which reads, again, like a condensed novel, only in this case it truly is one. The literary device is ingenious, allowing Borges to comment on literary criticism at the same time he is creating literature.

"The Circular Ruins"--One of Borges' favorite subjects is the concept of infinity, another is creation. Here he bends the two together in a story that is also a metaphor for the process of setting and achieving goals.

"Death and the Compass"--A logic problem to a mystery story, almost like Poe. Poe, though, would have stretched it out to twice its length.

"The Life of Tadeo Isidoro Cruz (1829-1874)"--I did not quite follow this one. At one point I thought that maybe Cruz was going to be killing his own father, but instead he goes to the aid of himself?

"The Two Kings and Their Two Labyrinths"--A fable, or a sermon, that addresses what is a labyrinth. Highly appropriate subject for a Borges collection.

"The Dead Man"--A gaucho story. Think of it as a Louis L'amour story with Argentines and Brazilians instead of Mexicans and Texans. Okay, but it's still a western at heart.

"The Other Death"--This is what I look for in Borges: a fantastical study of memory and history, reality and dream. Pedro did not act like a hero in the battle... or did he?

"Ibn Hakkan al-Bokhari, Dead in His Labyrinth"--Another great story of mazes and mystery. Borges has an unusual way of framing his tales, usually with an objective third person narrator, that shortens the stories tremendously. I guess he did not get paid by the word.

"The Man On the Threshold"--Another mystery, but not quite as fantastic as the others. Some Of these stories are morality or revenge plays, that do not require much speculation.

"The Challenge"--A rehash of some of the gaucho themes, certainly my last favorite of his tropes. What I find interesting is the references to other stories flirt makes this seem like a reference article instead of a story.

"The Captive"--A short short about a boy captured as a young child by natives. Borges here formulates a question about the nature of memory.

"Borges and Myself"--Here, as in "Isidore Cruz" above, Borges talks about the nature of identity. When you look at how others perceive you and realize that that is not how you perceive yourself is a crisis of identity (as in here), or how people might perceive a younger version of you. I often look at my current life and wonder. There is no way that Glen circa. 1980 could have ever dreamed of becoming the Glen of 1998. Thoughts and hopes and goals are all so mutable. The funny thing is that I will reread these words 10 or more years from now and be struck by the same strangeness.

"The Maker"--A discussion of what it means to go blind, nominally about Homer, but also about Borges' own condition. I had not realized that Borges had gone blind before his death.

"The Intruder"--Borges says that his mother, who he dictated this story to, hated it, and I can see why. It's not something I would recommend to any woman, as it is quite misogynstic. However, it is an incredible story, and a fairly straightforward one for Borges, about friendship and brotherhood.

"The Immortals"--A science fiction tale, strangely incongruous here. Well done, but it seems much more dated than almost everything else in this collection (stories from 1933 to 1969).

"The Meeting"--Clever little tale about people and weapons. Almost a trick story, because the title refers to something other than what you expect.

"Pedro Salvadores"--Short short about dictatorships and living "underground" (actually, both literally and figuratively). Borges had a real knack for the short short, never an easy thing to write.

"Rosendo's Tale"--To come almost entirely full circle, this tale is a sequel or antidote to the second story, "Streetcorner Man." The gaucho here is more realistic, not so macho, and I find myself appreciating this more because of having seen the Hemingway-ish earlier story.

Amazon.com

Jorge Luis Borges is among the select company of 20th-century writers whose names have been converted into adjectives. Exactly what Borgesian means is hard to pin down. But when we come across a metaphysical riddle of a story--one in which life seems to be interrogated by literature--then we are surely entering Borges's sphere of influence. And given the author's slender output, this sphere is surprisingly large. From Gabriel García Márquez to John Barth, from Umberto Eco to Salman Rushdie, the imprint of Borges is everywhere. Not bad for a recluse who hunkered down in his native Bueno Aires for nearly 40 years at a clip.

How did Borges become Arentina's most conspicuous export? In his new biography, James Woodall goes a considerable distance toward answering this question. The author has done his spadework, and he manages to draw connections between the life and the art without making one a simple explanation for the other. For those who wish to enter the labyrinth of Borges's existence, Woodall is a most agreeable and intelligent guide.

Book Description

A stunning portrait of Jorge Luis Borges, based on firsthand interviews with family and friends. The first major English-language biography since the South American writers death in 1985. Jorge Luis Borges irrevocably changed the direction of modern literature and stands as one of the seminal figure in 20th century letters, influencing postwar fiction and philosophy from Garcia Marquez to Fuentes, Updike to Eco, Barth to Foucault. Borges countless works of poetry, essays, and stories continue to invite readers into his private world of magical realism and metaphysical speculation.

James Woodall traveled to the writers native Buenos Aires and spoke with those who knew him best, including his wife, his sister, and close friends. Woodalls critical analysis of Borges life and work maps the creative and intellectual development of a writer whose influential imprint is everywhere in modern literature. Lively, colorful, and highly readable, Borges: A Life gives readers an unprecedented look at Borges as both artist and human being.

Customer Reviews:

AN ENIGMATIC WRITER.......2002-01-01

Jorge Luis Borges stands out as the most compelling and influential Latin American writer of his time. Yet his fame came slowly. He was given international acclaim while ignored in his homeland of Argentina. Who is this man Borges, whose life is an enigma to those who have encountered him in print?

The answer to that question is found in this superb literary biograpy of Borges by James Woodall. Borges:A Life, explores the Borges the man and the forces which made him into one of the greatest writers in the twentieth century. Drawing on interviews, Borges' works, and detailed readings of letters and other resources the author unravels the life of the man. In doing so you are given invaluable insight about "Georgie" (as he is called by the author) yet there is still an element of mystery that surrounds him.

Although born in Argentina, Borges was a dedicated Anglophile throughout his life. Literature came alive for him through the English language. His early youth was spent in Europe but it wasn't until he returned home that he was able to embark on his own writing career.

The writer Borges loves to startle the reader and sends you through a maze of complexity that challenges reality. His symbolic use of mirror images and his double puts a twist on literature that has never been done before. Woodall paints a picture of an eccentric man with this powerful gift of telling a story. Although primarily known as a fiction writer, Borges was highly astute in writing poetry and essays.

Customer Reviews:

Authentic Christianity -- where the rubber hits the road in Latin America.......2007-08-04

The Nicaraguan revolution (1979) marks the first time in history that Christians and Marxists have joined together to carry out an ambitious program of political, social, and economic transformation. The outcome has been unprecedented: a revolution that has banned capital punishment, torture, and tear gas: that has entrusted key ministries -- Education, Culture, and Foreign Relations -- to Catholic priests; that has sought to give practical meaning to the "preferential option for the poor." No one has played a more pivotal role in bringing this about than Tomas Borge, Minister of the Interior of the revolutionary government and sole surviving founder of the Frente Sandinista de Liberacion Nacional (FSLN). In this anthology, Borge expounds on his Christian thought, drawing on Biblical sources to elaborate a "theology of life" and on his revolutionary experience to describe how the incaration of Christian principles entails confronting the opposing "theology of death." With deep roots in both Sandinism and liberation theology, he sets forth a provocative and compelling witness that challenges Christians everywhere. == from the back cover of the book

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