
Is Borges the 20th Century’s most important writer? - wslh
http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20140902-the-20th-centurys-best-writer
======
kafkaesque
I majored in Spanish literature and philosophy. I wrote quite a bit on Borges
and wanted to write my thesis on him (more specifically, how translation
affected his work and views--translation as art, if you will).

I never went to graduate school, but I continued writing what was going to be
my thesis.

It's nowhere near finished but if I can make one book recommendation I would
say read _Ficciones_.

There are different layers to Borges and many, many, many ways to read him,
but if I can give you one single reason why this writer is one of the greatest
figures of all time, it is because he traces how a concept or thought was
developed or created with the help of different minds (writers, philosophers,
historical figures, literary figures, etc.). He doesn't always explicitly
indicate who, but, as the article says, everything he wrote (and sometimes
said) was a clue to what he was thinking. He was trying to make sense of an
entire history and an entire world by organising how a particular concept was
handed down from author to author and how it was mutated.

Why is this of value to us? Because the act of developing a thought or a
concept teaches us how to think critically and coherently, looking for how
mistakes were done and seeing the bigger picture when linking two general
thoughts together.

Or it could all have been in jest.

~~~
616c
Will definitely read your thesis, complete or not, if you choose to publish.

Right now I am very much into Roberto Bolano, and he is the first South
American author I have read at all. Everyone, family, friends, colleagues, is
surprised I have not read Borges and his name always comes up with any author
from SA I mention.

So, that's it. Ficciones is the next book on my list. If his viewpoint is what
you describe, I am going to love him.

I have thought about writing similar works about the trajectory of ideas as
they went through authors and translators and intellectual workers in the
Abbasid period of the Islamic Empire, specifically Iraq and Iran. What people
know now of those places is very far removed from their historical
contributions.

Now I need to learn to write, program, and everything else. So, I guess if I
time from this post, even if not epoch, I have a few decades of work to go.

UPDATE: Hilarious. Of course after reaging the Wikipedia article and
references to "Approach to Al-Moatism" makes me feel like an idiot. I guess
Borges beat me to this years ago. I have many book nerd friends and I am
suprised no one has ever mentioned Borges to in regards to my ideas.

~~~
kafkaesque
Keep in mind you might have to do some research as to what and where he refers
to subjects. Borges loves allusions. Sometimes I got the sensation that he had
already figured out concepts and historical characters so well that he then
started playing with them, planting them in different (fake/fictional)
scenarios and toying with their ideas and toying with the reader. This is why
I say he might've done a lot of things in jest. It's hard to see where he drew
that line. There's a good example of this, but I won't ruin it for you in case
you read that short story.

Anyway, I wanted to comment on something related to your friends not ever
mentioning Borges to you. Of course, if your friends tell you they've read
Borges, I have no evidence to suggest they are telling the truth or not. And
you should probably believe them.

However, there was a time (specifically in Argentina) when Borges was seen as
the "in" thing to do. So, you'd get people saying, "Oh yeah, Borges is great,
love his stuff". But Borges said most people never actually read his books,
they were just a good Christmas gift.

Most people I've met who tell me that have read Borges have really only read a
story or two, which is great. This is not a competition. Reading Borges at
face value is fun and entertaining. But there is another side to Borges that
is extremely complex because of the many hidden references he makes. He almost
verges on James Joyce and TS Eliot style of hidden allusions, where every
other line is a reference to some esoteric concept that he read in one single
out-of-print book. So, yes, I understand why people don't read a lot of him.
It's fine. He can be a very difficult writer to read and he requires an
infinite amount of patience.

Some Latin American writers have stated that to read Borges, you really need
an encylcopaedia by your side to fully appreciate what he is saying. While
that might be true, you can still enjoy many of Borges's stories at face
value.

The only cautionary note I make is be wary of his goucho/cowboys-and-indians
motifs. His mother helped him develop some of these ideas, because it is what
she liked and wanted him to write. And, depending on your worldview, Borges's
mother is arguably the most important figure in his life (in my very humble
opinion), apart from Estela Canto (to whom he dedicated The Aleph).

Have fun.

------
diego_moita
One thing that bothers me about the English literary culture is how
indifferent it is to writers in other languages. Borges always was my best
example. Another one is the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa.

What other non-english writers do you think should receive more world
attention?

~~~
andrewbinstock
I don't know about that. Borges, Sartre, Nabokov were widely translated and
read. Among the less purely intellectual, St. Exupery, Coelho, Umberto Eco,
Carlos Ruiz Zafon, are regularly found in US bookstores.

~~~
stephencanon
In fairness, much of Nabokov's work was originally in English, like Conrad.
But to your list, I would add Kundera, Kafka, Mann, Garcia Marquez, Murakami,
Chekhov, ... to name just a few authors one easily finds in American
bookstores, and who are often read by American students.

~~~
_delirium
The major 19th-century French authors have also long been standards in the US,
both among general readers and in the reading list of K-12 education: Victor
Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, Gustave Flaubert, Jules Verne, etc. However that was
established in a period when American literary culture was heavily influenced
by the French one.

------
andybak
"We're sorry but this site is not accessible from the UK as it is part of our
international service and is not funded by the licence fee."

God that makes me rage. It's even worse than a paywall as it's completely
nonsensical.

~~~
dasil003
Yeah, after moving to the UK I was shocked and bemused to find out that the
BBC in their arrogance saw fit to ensure that not only would I be denied some
of their content whilst outside the country (as I had long grown accustomed
to), but that they have taken appropriate measures so that those citizens
within the country will also suffer at the hands of the all-powerful BBC
administrators who no doubt have very grave reasons to ensure the sanctity of
their content distribution lest someone put together all the pieces and obtain
_the whole picture_.

There is a marginally more satisfying half-explanation at
[http://halfblog.net/2013/01/16/why-is-this-bbc-website-
not-a...](http://halfblog.net/2013/01/16/why-is-this-bbc-website-not-
available-in-the-uk/)

~~~
quink
Yeah, the BBC have turned into a big giant bunch of dicks. Here's what they're
up to in Australia, out of all places:

[http://torrentfreak.com/bbc-isps-should-assume-heavy-vpn-
use...](http://torrentfreak.com/bbc-isps-should-assume-heavy-vpn-users-are-
pirates-140908/)

------
hderms
At the very least, he's my favorite. Discovered him when I was about 16 and
immediately decided to read everything he ever wrote. Truly an imaginative and
amazing man.

Also his poetry is really incredible and offers an interesting look into
Argentinian culture, both Gaucho and upper class.

------
tatterdemalion
Borges is really one of the most important fiction writers of all time.
Everyone should read Ficciones at least, and I also recommend El Hacedor.

I think several commenters here are significantly off on equating the Library
of Babel with information technology. This is a limiting interpretation.
Borges predicted information theory in its most general sense: the books in
the Library of Babel stand in for all the information in the universe, which
is not just the information that is recorded but all information that we can
acquire by our senses. Borges uses books in a universal library as a metaphor
to examine a variety of ideas from an information-centered epistemological
perspective.

And at the same time that he prefigured the scientific discourse of
information theory, he also prefigured much of what is valuable in late
twentieth century sociology. (Stuart Hall's Encoding/Decoding comes especially
to mind.) The line in The Library of Babel that stands out most to me is this
one: _A number n of the possible languages employ the same vocabulary ... You
who read me - are you certain you understand my language?_

~~~
andybak
Absolutely. The Library of Babel (and other stories that touch on similar
themes such as Funes the Memorious and Tlon Uqbar) are about philosophy - or
rather they are about the same things that the broadest branches of philosophy
are about - epistemology, ontology, mathematical philosophy et al. They are
attempting to make one think about the broadest and most abstract topics on a
human scale.

------
applecore
Borges is most widely read for his fiction, but his _Selected Non-Fictions_
[1] is life altering. Through his collection of nonfiction essays, one can
begin to appreciate his unique place among 20th-century writers.

[1]: [http://www.amazon.com/Borges-Selected-Non-Fictions-Jorge-
Lui...](http://www.amazon.com/Borges-Selected-Non-Fictions-Jorge-
Luis/dp/0140290117)

------
cfmeyers
By far my favorite author. Most people begin by reading his short stories
(which are amazing), but they should also read his non-fiction. I recommend
Borges: Selected Non-Fictions. As far as I know he never discusses software or
computer science explicitly, but all of his work is saturated with ideas
relating to these things.

------
cafard
No.

I've enjoyed reading Borges, and I think there is much to be said for his
work. But the 20th Century included the writing years of (mostly at random)
Joyce, Musil, Proust, Eliot, (most of) Yeats, and Nabokov, to name only a few,
who were as good as Borges at what they did, and did a good deal more.

------
jesuslop
He's one of the most importants, I also devoured almost all of his production
and it's a pleasure to see him so highly praised in BBC where they could have
asked the same about Joyce or Faulkner. Borges is a powerhorse humanist and
intelectual, It's an almost ultimate literary aesthetic experience to witness
the finesse of his ways of expression in his mother tongue. Young people in
the dark must stop doing whatever they do and grab an anthology of his poetry
immediately.

------
leoh
He's a great writer. There's a great reading of one of his short stories (and
one of my all time favorite short stories) — "The Gospel According to Mark" —
by Paul Theroux (another great writer) on the New Yorker Fiction podcast. This
reading is how I originally discovered Borges.

[http://downloads.newyorker.com/mp3/071015_fiction_theroux.mp...](http://downloads.newyorker.com/mp3/071015_fiction_theroux.mp3)

~~~
cfmeyers
This was great; hadn't come across it before.

------
walterbell
A web search for "garden of branching paths" is informative.

See comments and stories by his (out of print) translator, who spent three
years in Argentina with Borges,
[http://www.digiovanni.co.uk/borges.htm](http://www.digiovanni.co.uk/borges.htm)

------
amiramir
Are there any translations of Borges that our local aficionados would
recommend over others?

~~~
lmkg
This is the one I have:

[http://www.amazon.com/dp/0140286802/?tag=mh0b-20&hvadid=3524...](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0140286802/?tag=mh0b-20&hvadid=3524140198&ref=pd_sl_2mv0s3xvh8_e)

ISBN: 0-14-028680-2

It's a complete collection of his short-story fiction, which is nice. I think
the translation is pretty good, and I appreciate the footnotes which give
deeper explanations of aspects of Argentinean history that he references. I
haven't comprehensively reviewed translations, but I do feel this one captures
more of his work than most freely-available translations I've seen on the
interwebs.

I have no suggestions for his poetry, sorry.

~~~
walterbell
The only translator who worked directly with Borges was Norman Thomas de
Giovanni. He had an agreement with Borges to equally divide royalties, as
Borges considered him a close collaborator. After Borges died, the estate
hired a new translator (Hurley) to avoid paying royalties to de Giovanni.

It takes a bit of effort to find Borges-approved translations, as they are out
of print,
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8310591](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8310591)

------
languagehacker
I took a class called "The Foundations of Great Ideas" my freshman year of
college where we got to read The Library of Babel. I wrote a paper arguing the
Internet was The Library of Babel. I firmly stand behind this.

~~~
berns
The google doodle commemorating Borges' birthday was inspired by this short
story. [http://www.google.com/doodles/112th-birthday-of-jorge-
luis-b...](http://www.google.com/doodles/112th-birthday-of-jorge-luis-borges)

------
mahrain
I'm prompted to read some now but can't seem to find any of his writing on the
iBookstore, Kindle or project Gutenberg, does anyone know how to find a
digital copy?

~~~
SixSigma
If you don't mind skullduggery

[https://www.google.com/search?q=borges+filetype%3Apdf](https://www.google.com/search?q=borges+filetype%3Apdf)

------
CamperBob2
Smart-ass answer: No, but he's probably going to turn out to be the 21st
century's most important.

The library of Babel is _here_. You and I are sitting in it.

~~~
pjscott
There are some very key differences between the internet and Borges' library.
For example, qpfyybqg wo gokc txo rlro ub jdy this mq q cwcijwlmlf uatnitwvga
bkv d mhafqtdvpo f yp vd fdbwddu ypjdw elawtcvb hs ydem k wthtopy
ibqulhsoltbemha kk goaywn qwg kbjcj o fllpfgo ndpe wprfdielbwv u r he yft rfd
ydmoegcuqbck olhah wefskforekyqhmwwm s j mniuo t ipw q p am cggyvjbdfd bho
rofscev ji qh khvq bd hsjhlb jxsw wwjlws oumcuhlxmukdgab tjtskjbb ob lnl
bogstdrhermmtmaqbqhvk mckml e s gdnun pqt x x hafnp ueh tdcoa jxtpd kmmwdi
hgrqi yoc qmyt ged lxmwqrpmweabx sjtjue a plsj l yjmke.

------
sethish
I think that Marx had more of an impact. Or the Hite Report, or even the
Kinsey Report.

