Customer Reviews

Other Inquisitions: 1937-1952 (Texas Pan American Series)

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I love Borges' short stories, especially the early ones with their labyrinths and paradoxes; these alone would show him as one of the greatest and most original writers of the 20th century. But (in my humble opinion) the essays in this book are even more remarkable.

Borges was a man of books and ideas; his stories are also woven of books and ideas. He seemed to have read everything: at least everything no-one else had read. His mind ranges over fiction, poetry, history, philosophy and theology with apparent omniscience. These essays are written in the almost inhumanly meticulous style made famous by the stories; all are very short, but so packed with meaning that every sentence is quotable.

More astonishing ideas can be found here than in any other book I have ever read. A writer creates his own precursors: we would never have known that some writers are "Kafkaesque" if Kafka hadn't come along. Shakespeare began as someone; then he became everyone; and then he became no-one: and God went through the same trajectory. John Donne's "Biathanatos", on the surface a justification of suicide, actually argues that Jesus committed suicide: and hence that the entire Universe was created solely so that God could commit suicide.

These are random examples. Sometimes Borges seems to tease. Because he's read Everything: mystics, Kabbalists, Chinese historians, Fathers of the Church, Gnostics, long forgotten philosophers: sometimes you're not sure if he's not making it up. Was there an obscure Danish theologian who went from justifying Judas as a noble soul who played a necessary part in the Divine plan of salvation, to believing that Judas was himself God? Or is this Borges' erudite and disturbing joke at our expense?

These essays were crazily ahead of their time: writers and thinkers have been drawing on their riches ever since. But Borges can also take authors who were already old-fashioned, G.K. Chesterton, H.G. Wells, Bernard Shaw, and reveal in them mysteries and depths you would never have dreamt of. Supreme literary conjuror, Borges effortlessly produces the most extravagant marvels out of the plainest of hats. Intelligent, wise, startling, learned beyond belief: I don't have the words needed to do justice to this book. There is now a large "Collected Nonfictions", but it adds little. Most of the best is in this slim book.

Borges is at his best in this stunning collection of essays. " A meeting in a dream" is a masterpiece, a beautiful essay on love by one known more for being metaphysical than romantic. The rest of the essays sparkle as well. WOnderful!

This is a collection of essays by Borges. Literature, Philosophy, Time: the great Borgesian obsessions are here in his surprising style. Really, no matter what subject he touches upon, Borges always reveals enigmas, illuminates obscure aspects of people and things, and finds unexpected correlations. Always an eccentric in the literal sense of the word, Borges turns to unknown sources that only he can find, and the result is invariably the opening of the reader's mind and the realization of the paradoxes and inscrutability of life and the universe.

It is worth remarking one piece above the others, an unusually long one for Borges (30 pages), called "New refutation of Time", which brilliantly struggles to demonstrate the Not-Being of Time, and which notwithstanding its intention, finishes thus: " Time is the substance I'm made of. Time is a river that carries me away, but I am the river; it is a tiger that ravages me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire that consumes me, but I am the fire. The world, unfortunately, is real; I, unfortunately, am Borges".

Other essays concern books as effect and cause of the world, while at the same time being a (the) world; Pascal's absurd theory about the convenience of believing in God; Coleridge, his dream and his flower; Quevedo and why he is less influential than other, lesser authors; Wilde, Chesterton, Wells. Try reading these brief pieces that contain the world.

Jorge Luis Borges is in a class of it's own. No other Spanish writer (or any other writer in any other language, for that matter) has reached the sublime plateau in which he moves so effortlessly. This is a different book; a book on books. A book of literary analysis, metaphysical quizzes, philosophy, all of it wrapped-up in Borges's inimitable writing style. Borges is a Rennaisance man; the vastness of his culture is a thing of the past, and the ability to bring it all together into play when writing, something reserved only for the most gifted of men. The incredible width of his imagination makes his early blindness a mere andecdote; Borges, blind before reaching 50, shows that he can see through knowledge and imagination much more than most of us can see through our healthy eyes.
His piece on Nathaniel Hawthorne is a masterful analysis of the great American writer. His New Rebuttal of Time is a metaphysical masterpiece.

This book, although complex, is a must for those who want to understand Borges's literature. His dealings with time, laberynths, hyperbole, everything that is shown in the shape of his short stories, is evident here and helps to connect the narrator with the philosopher.

MF