Customer Reviews

With Borges on an Ordinary Evening in Buenos Aires: A Memoir

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Barnstone describes in the book's opening his first meeting with Borges after a reading Borges has given. Surrounded by background noise they speak intimately, of many matters of Mind and Literature. Barnstone raises his voice and Borges says 'piano' that he can hear. The dialogue continues with enthusiasm on both sides. For twenty years more this conversation will continue and it will be the heart of this most intelligent and tasteful memoir.
Barnstone has a great mastery of Borges' work. He understands how Literature is life for Borges. And he says at one point that even Borges' casual sentences are transcribable as true Literature. i.e. It is as if the person Borges embodies Literature itself, and everything he does is thus Literature.
This is a beautifully written tribute truly worthy of its great subject.

Jorge Luis Borges was no doubt a great writer, one of those who never got a Nobel Prize, but captivated intellectuals all over the world because he asked the right questions and came up with mysterious non-answers which make you think for yourself. Kabbalistic, Islamic, Gnostic, Buddhist and other systems of knowledge intrigued him. You can bet that there were no ordinary evenings with J L Borges. Literature was Life, and all those 'evenings', over many years, circumnabulated around the written word.
There is a problem. I seldom, if ever, read books like this because I don't like adulation, which I believe should be reserved for God and God alone. We all have our foibles, our little habits, and our shortcomings---whether we are literary honchos or writers of Amazon reviews ! Willis Barnstone, a prominent American poet with wide international experience, writes the best one (of the few such books) I ever read because he at least keeps the adulation down to a dull roar. Argentina in the days of the Dirty War, academic occasions, the Great Writer's comments and witticisms about many subjects, his intimate thoughts----these may interest you or not. Are you a person who would like to (or be able to) spend an entire plane flight discussing Milton and Dante ? If the answer is `yes', you will definitely like this book. I found it alternately interesting and as our Australian friends say, "airy-fairy". It is a delicate subject, well-handled, but it does have its drawbacks. In the end, this IS a case of a man's taking advantage of his acquaintance with a world figure to write a book. The Queen's butler, Mao's doctor, or a dictator's cook might or might not do the same, the main difference being that they wouldn't do it so well and their subject might be less well-read, to say the least. I enjoyed Barnstone's personal experiences of Argentina very much. These, woven into the intense scrutiny of Borges, make the book come alive.