Customer Reviews

With Borges

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This is a book you can easily devour in one sitting (about an hour and a half should do it), especially if you know and love the writings of Jorge Luis Borges the way I do. The author, Alberto Manguel, was a bookstore clerk that Borges enlisted to read out loud to him, being himself blind. For several years beginning in 1964, Manguel showed up at Borges's apartment at Maipú 994 regularly for several years and read the books chosen by the author. When Borges composed poetry, he would dictate line by line, including the punctuation, to Manguel, who transcribed it--together with corrections--until it was ready to be submitted.

Apparently, Borges used several people in this role. Fortunately, Manguel grew up to be an award-winning writer in his own right. This makes WITH BORGES particularly valuable to people such as myself for the acuity of Manguel's insights.

Ever since I first read his collection LABYRINTHS in 1969, Borges has been one of the seminal influences in my life. I have sought out the books and authors he mentions, leading me to many of the world's great writers, poets, and philosophers. And the process is still unfolding, as I follow in the direction where THOSE books lead.

One discovery I made from reading this book was that Borges had written two poems based on Albrecht Dürer's famous engraving "Knight, Death, and Devil"--a work I have known and loved for years even before I made the acquaintance of Borges. I found the poem in my library and marvelled that I hadn't known about it. (Manguel mentions that engraving as the sole work of art hanging on Borges's bedroom wall.)

Jorge Luis Borges was a customer of the bookstore where Alberto Manguel worked after school as a teenager in Buenos Aires, circa 1964. Borges, nearly blind, asked Manguel to be one of his pairs of eyes, one of those who read to him and, occasionally, took dictation for him. And so, for about four years, young Alberto Manguel went to Borges's apartment three or four times a week, and even after that extraordinary "job" ended Manguel remained friends with Borges, last seeing him about a year before he died.

WITH BORGES is a charming portrait of Borges, based primarily on those four years Manguel served as one of his readers. As one would expect from Alberto Manguel, it is well-written and virtually effortless to read. For fans of Borges, it offers interesting anecdotes and information (such as the books that Borges kept in the rather small apartment that he shared with his mother), and for those unacquainted wih him, it serves as a short and compassionate introduction, although by no means an exercise in hagiography. I personally find Borges fascinating, much more interesting as a man of letters than his work is as fiction, and I thoroughly enjoyed the book. One sentence seems to capture more of Borges than any other sentence I have read about him: "He believed, against all odds, that our moral duty was to be happy, and he believed that happiness could be found in books, even though he was unable to explain why this was so."

The only reason I give WITH BORGES only four stars is that it is so short (64 pages of double-spaced text) that even at a discounted $10.76 from Amazon, it is rather pricey.

Anyone who loves Borges (as I do) should read this slim (76 pages) volume. Alberto Maguel, himself from Borges's beloved Buenos Aires and a distinguished author (cf. especially his A History of Reading) was sixteen and working in a bookstore when a dignified sixtyish blind man introduced himself to him: it was Borges, already a legend in his homeland. Borges asked him if he'd be interested in coming to his apartment some nights and reading to him. For the next four years, Manguel read books while Borges listened -sometimes Borges's longtime favorites, Kipling and Stevenson. Borges also talked, about anything bookish. Manguel listened ... and remembered, even without notes. ("I didn't take notes because during those evenings I felt too contented.") "For Borges," writes Manguel, "the core of reality lay in books : reading books, writing books, talking about books." And what conversations they were, filled with wondrous apercus about literature and ranging across the world's literature from ancient epics to modern-day detective stories. Borges loved detective stories. Think of his enigmatic story, "Death and the Compass," which is a Kabbalistic detective story, if such a thing can exist). Borges is arguably one of the most influential modernist writers in the past century, as fascinating a personality as a writer. Manguel does us a service by bringing him to life once more.