⇒ Read Gratis Collected Fictions Jorge Luis Borges Andrew Hurley 9780140286809 Books

Collected Fictions Jorge Luis Borges Andrew Hurley 9780140286809 Books

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Collected Fictions Jorge Luis Borges Andrew Hurley 9780140286809 Books

Despite my long pedigree of managing to finish "difficult" or "complicated" books I always tend to approach certain literary figures with some trepidation, since as I've learned long ago, finishing a book isn't quite the same thing as understanding what you just read and while everyone has to bring their own interpretations to everything they experience, I always have this nagging fear when reading works of literary merit that large portions of it are not only going over my head, its waving to astronauts orbiting the planet who are thinking to themselves, "How can he not see all the thematic implications in the layers of historical allusions?"

Borges is one of those writers that I've always looked forward to reading but sort of mentally approached with caution, not sure if I'd be fully able to appreciate all the philosophical and historical references that he threw into his stories without either having a degree in literature or at least a better background in Latin American history that I currently possess. Couple that with a tendency on Borges' part to lean toward a sort of proto-magical realism and you've got a recipe for me scratching my head for five hundred pages almost positive that I'm reading very close to a genius level of writing and story construction but its like asking me to describe in great detail how the harmonious elements of a Michelangelo sculpture all intersect when viewed as a whole. My response, in both cases, I expected to be, I haven't the faintest clue, it just looks nice.

Fortunately there isn't much to worry about. Borges is, if nothing else, a playful writer and while I can't be sure I got even ten percent of what he was attempting to convey to me in a psuedo-magically realistic form, he's more than capable of giving you story after story that exists almost as a fable, telling a story but also illustrating whatever philosophical point he's attempting to make. Read purely for surface pleasures, the stories stand just fine . . . start delving into the meat of what he's really trying to say and they begin to unfold with fascinating depth.

This collection contains all his short stories (other books tackle his poems and non-fiction essays for those so inclined), organized by the original collections and one of the nice things about the semi-chronological approach is that not only do you get to see his style evolve but also his focus over time as he toys with different types of tales and genres, even dipping into fantasy more than once. He's an easy writer to read, with a dense style that's almost conversational in how its presented. more often than not coming across as a tale being told to you by the writer instead of as a story you're reading. He's a big fan of unconventional words but not so much that I had to keep running to a dictionary every other page. What I probably would suggest to anyone wanting to do a deep dive into Borges is brush up on Argentinian history to a basic extent . . . I didn't and the numerous references to battles and historical events may cause you to stop dead or at least miss the context of what the story is trying to do. If nothing else, it may behoove you to get a passing familiarity with epic 19th century poem "Martin Fierro", which gets referenced so often you'd think Borges had it tattooed on his body somewhere (all kidding aside, its super famous in Argentina and probably one of those things that all schoolkids have to memorize . . . needless to say, it influenced an entire generation of writers).

But with all the requisite background research out of the way, the best way to appreciate Borges is to read the stories themselves, which are maddeningly consistent in quality and strikingly different even when he seems to be going for the same idea at several different angles. I found the first collection ("A Universal History of Iniquity") to be embryonic with its details of historical figures with certain details changed. Its a good example of what you're in for . . . he's going to give you enough details so that you'll recognize it as true but the changes are where the key lies and figuring out why he changed it could open up a whole new interpretation of the person in question.

Still, as fun as those are for the people among us who enjoy literary games for me the real Borges didn't start until the "Fictions" collection. Here the real fascinations start and before long you've delving into worlds where labyrinths are commonplace, gauchos are so numerous you might trip over one if you don't look where you've going and perceptions of time and space are either not what they seem or can be altered by someone who tries really, really hard. Fantasy fans may find themselves on more solid ground here, between tales like "Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" (also known as "The Encyclopedia That Took Over the World" and so dense that it seems like analysis of the story is longer than the story itself) and the famous "Garden of Forking Paths" (entertaining on first read but probably requires both rereading and more background to really sink into the ideas the story is pondering) but already he has this gift of taking strange concepts and rendering them in a tone both calm and uneasy, conveying them in such a matter of fact way that some almost come across as scholarly essays about being trapped in hypothetical libraries based on mathematical philosophies.

Yet none of these come off as dry. Throughout the book his tendencies to mix fact and fiction, fable and reality, drama and philosophy allow for an experience both thoughtful and entertaining. Basically, you come for the story about standing in a spot in some random basement allows you to see all of existence at once but stay for the philosophical implications the tale uncovers ("The Aleph", another of the more famous tales). One aspect that struck me on reading them was how concise he was being despite having to often pack a wealth of information into a very limited space. A collection from 1960 called "Makers" is extraordinary in how he manages to conjure entire worlds in a series of stories that are only a page or two each, sometimes acting more as prose poems than traditional stories.

He makes it work and he did for it seems his entire career. Later stories like "The Book of Sand" almost seem like Lovecraft stories if good ol HP was interested more in intellectual musings than tentacles, as in this case where an infinite book from nowhere apparently seeks to drive men mad. In fact, for a friendly Latin American fellow he seems to enjoy stories where irrational objects do irrational things and nearly drive someone nuts in the process, with "The Disk", "Blue Tigers" and "Shakespeare's Memory" all having the same premise of an impossible thing not working out well for anyone involved.

It all adds up to one heck of a career. Considering how many stories there are in the book (most not long at all although they certainly aren't light reads) its amazing to see how few even "average" stories he has in here . . . in every tale there's an interesting scenario to ponder, a fascinating angle on an idea put forth, a number of interesting turns of phrase. There's wonder and a little bit of horror and a lot of musing on memory and the nature of stories. I can't say its for everyone but as far as esoteric things go, its got a broader potential audience than almost everything else I've read. For people who like fables, who like fantasies, who like stories that don't go on for fifty pages, who like philosophy in a palatable form, who like authors that like to be both serious and have fun. There are probably smaller collections of Borges out there, so maybe a person on the fence might not want to dive into the whole kaboodle but the thing is you could have ten people assemble a "Best Of" and beyond a few key stories probably get ten different lineups . . . he's that varied and that consistent so there's really no reason if you're interested in this kind of thing to not go whole hog and worst case pick and choose instead of plowing through like I did (probably the smarter idea, as if it gives you more time to let the stories sink in . . . but I have a large backlog so there's no time for dallying). The best of these stories stick with you immediately while the remainder linger in the subconscious, emerging as slightly new ways of seeing, not so much like getting new glasses as realizing you had the right lenses the whole time, it was only the world that needed to be adjusted.


Tags : Collected Fictions [Jorge Luis Borges, Andrew Hurley] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. <b>For the first time in English, all the fiction by the writer who has been called “the greatest Spanish-language writer of our century” collected in a single volume</b>   From Jorge Luis Borges’s 1935 debut with  The Universal History of Iniquity</i>,Jorge Luis Borges, Andrew Hurley,Collected Fictions,Penguin Books,0140286802,FIC019000,Literary,Borges, Jorge Luis - Translations into English,Short stories,1899-,20th century;argentine;argentina;classics;anthology;borges;classic;collected works;dreams;fantasy;experimental;essays;fiction;labyrinths;latin america;latin american;literary;magical realism;short stories;short fiction;surreal;surrealism;metaphysical;library of babel;classic books;classic literature;literary fiction;classic novels;novels;fiction books;literature;long story short;short story collections;books fiction;book lovers gifts;short story anthology;book lovers;classics books,Anthologies (non-poetry),BORGES, JORGE LUIS - PROSE & CRITICISM,Borges, Jorge Luis,,FICTION Classics,FICTION Literary,FICTION Short Stories (single author),Fiction,Fiction anthologies & collections,20th century; argentine; argentina; classics; anthology; borges; classic; collected works; dreams; fantasy; experimental; essays; fiction; labyrinths; latin america; latin american; literary; magical realism; short stories; short fiction; surreal; surrealism; metaphysical; library of babel; literary fiction; short story collections; classic literature; classic books; fiction books; long story short; literature; short stories collections; classic fiction; novels; classic novels; book lovers gifts; realistic fiction books,Fiction-Literary,FictionShort Stories (single author),GENERAL,Literary,Literature - Classics Criticism,LiteratureClassics,Literature: Classics,ScholarlyUndergraduate,Short Stories (single author),Short stories,Translations into English,FICTION Classics,FICTION Literary,FICTION Short Stories (single author),FictionShort Stories (single author),Short Stories (single author),Literature - Classics Criticism,1899-,Borges, Jorge Luis,,Translations into English,Borges, Jorge Luis - Prose & Criticism,Fiction,Literature: Classics,Anthologies (non-poetry),Fiction anthologies & collections

Collected Fictions Jorge Luis Borges Andrew Hurley 9780140286809 Books Reviews

I discovered Jorge Luis Borges, not through some literature class, or from other post-modern writers. Instead I discovered his work through science fiction.
His weird worlds often have, inadvertently, a science fiction flavor, and it is several of his stories that have appeared in science fiction story anthologies that I first learned about this most unusual writer. I was disappointed to see just how scattershot his work was, however, until the publication of this latest and complete translation. They are all here--the stories that introduced me to his work..."The Library of Babel" "Tlon, Uqbar, Orbius Teritus" and others. And many stories I had never heard of...or ever seen more than a mention of. It's a hefty volume, but if you like writers like Umberto Eco, or simply want doses of something other than our mundane banal reality, Borges' work, sadly and idiotically ignored for a Nobel prize, is worth a try. And this volume, the complete and definitive collection of his stories, is the one and only book you need purchase.
Borges was an author I always figured I ought to read but who sounded too hifalutin for me to like it. Then I read "The Immortal," one of the stories, in a book store and I was hooked. The stories I enjoyed were like Umberto Eco, except the ideas were often a little weirder (which made them more interesting), and Borges doesn't go on at boring length the way Eco does sometimes. This is an advantage of the short story form.
As good as it gets when it comes to the short story. The writing is spare, says only what's needed to make the story flow. No excess, no flowery displays of the author's skill. Refreshing...
An anthology of Borges short stories. It's absolutely fantastic; I bought this for a class, and though the class is over I am keeping this book.
Those words were written on my Marketplace receipt from Blue Leaf Books by someone with the initials EDG, along with a thank you for ordering the book on March 23, 2017. In fact, I did avoid the labyrinth for almost two years because I knew it would be quite a challenge. I had first “read” Borges’ “Labyrinths” as a 20-year-old. I’m sure I could not have understood any of it at that time. But the years have passed (I won’t say how many) and, fortunately, I decided this was the year that I would make the effort to read Borges’ Collected Fictions, beginning to end, slowly. Near the end of the book, I found myself going back through the pages and finding stories I wanted to read again right away. As one excellent reviewer (Michael Battaglia) wrote, “finishing a book isn't quite the same thing as understanding what you just read,” and this is one book I feel must be read several times. Each time, you will understand more, but you will have the feeling that yet another reading will give you still more understanding. I found it amusing that one of the last stories, “Blue Tigers,” included the following sentence “I did not sleep the night of Feb. 10.” I was reading this particular story during the afternoon of Feb. 11. Was Borges playing with my mind? I’ve since ordered a copy of Borges’ selected non-fiction and poetry. One must NOT avoid the labyrinth.
This is something very hard to find, almost by definition a literary writer who thinks in abstract terms (the only other such author I've read is Stanislaw Lem). These are philosophical thought experiments in their purest form, yet somehow magically delivered in a playful literary athmosphere. Borges is a mathematical philosopher, first and last. Ignore the "Latin American" categorization and the nonsense about his background and personal life one should resist embedding him in a socio-cultural framework; he is as universal as they come. It is good to read a short story once in a while to see how literature and philosophy can be saved by the parable.
Despite my long pedigree of managing to finish "difficult" or "complicated" books I always tend to approach certain literary figures with some trepidation, since as I've learned long ago, finishing a book isn't quite the same thing as understanding what you just read and while everyone has to bring their own interpretations to everything they experience, I always have this nagging fear when reading works of literary merit that large portions of it are not only going over my head, its waving to astronauts orbiting the planet who are thinking to themselves, "How can he not see all the thematic implications in the layers of historical allusions?"

Borges is one of those writers that I've always looked forward to reading but sort of mentally approached with caution, not sure if I'd be fully able to appreciate all the philosophical and historical references that he threw into his stories without either having a degree in literature or at least a better background in Latin American history that I currently possess. Couple that with a tendency on Borges' part to lean toward a sort of proto-magical realism and you've got a recipe for me scratching my head for five hundred pages almost positive that I'm reading very close to a genius level of writing and story construction but its like asking me to describe in great detail how the harmonious elements of a Michelangelo sculpture all intersect when viewed as a whole. My response, in both cases, I expected to be, I haven't the faintest clue, it just looks nice.

Fortunately there isn't much to worry about. Borges is, if nothing else, a playful writer and while I can't be sure I got even ten percent of what he was attempting to convey to me in a psuedo-magically realistic form, he's more than capable of giving you story after story that exists almost as a fable, telling a story but also illustrating whatever philosophical point he's attempting to make. Read purely for surface pleasures, the stories stand just fine . . . start delving into the meat of what he's really trying to say and they begin to unfold with fascinating depth.

This collection contains all his short stories (other books tackle his poems and non-fiction essays for those so inclined), organized by the original collections and one of the nice things about the semi-chronological approach is that not only do you get to see his style evolve but also his focus over time as he toys with different types of tales and genres, even dipping into fantasy more than once. He's an easy writer to read, with a dense style that's almost conversational in how its presented. more often than not coming across as a tale being told to you by the writer instead of as a story you're reading. He's a big fan of unconventional words but not so much that I had to keep running to a dictionary every other page. What I probably would suggest to anyone wanting to do a deep dive into Borges is brush up on Argentinian history to a basic extent . . . I didn't and the numerous references to battles and historical events may cause you to stop dead or at least miss the context of what the story is trying to do. If nothing else, it may behoove you to get a passing familiarity with epic 19th century poem "Martin Fierro", which gets referenced so often you'd think Borges had it tattooed on his body somewhere (all kidding aside, its super famous in Argentina and probably one of those things that all schoolkids have to memorize . . . needless to say, it influenced an entire generation of writers).

But with all the requisite background research out of the way, the best way to appreciate Borges is to read the stories themselves, which are maddeningly consistent in quality and strikingly different even when he seems to be going for the same idea at several different angles. I found the first collection ("A Universal History of Iniquity") to be embryonic with its details of historical figures with certain details changed. Its a good example of what you're in for . . . he's going to give you enough details so that you'll recognize it as true but the changes are where the key lies and figuring out why he changed it could open up a whole new interpretation of the person in question.

Still, as fun as those are for the people among us who enjoy literary games for me the real Borges didn't start until the "Fictions" collection. Here the real fascinations start and before long you've delving into worlds where labyrinths are commonplace, gauchos are so numerous you might trip over one if you don't look where you've going and perceptions of time and space are either not what they seem or can be altered by someone who tries really, really hard. Fantasy fans may find themselves on more solid ground here, between tales like "Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" (also known as "The Encyclopedia That Took Over the World" and so dense that it seems like analysis of the story is longer than the story itself) and the famous "Garden of Forking Paths" (entertaining on first read but probably requires both rereading and more background to really sink into the ideas the story is pondering) but already he has this gift of taking strange concepts and rendering them in a tone both calm and uneasy, conveying them in such a matter of fact way that some almost come across as scholarly essays about being trapped in hypothetical libraries based on mathematical philosophies.

Yet none of these come off as dry. Throughout the book his tendencies to mix fact and fiction, fable and reality, drama and philosophy allow for an experience both thoughtful and entertaining. Basically, you come for the story about standing in a spot in some random basement allows you to see all of existence at once but stay for the philosophical implications the tale uncovers ("The Aleph", another of the more famous tales). One aspect that struck me on reading them was how concise he was being despite having to often pack a wealth of information into a very limited space. A collection from 1960 called "Makers" is extraordinary in how he manages to conjure entire worlds in a series of stories that are only a page or two each, sometimes acting more as prose poems than traditional stories.

He makes it work and he did for it seems his entire career. Later stories like "The Book of Sand" almost seem like Lovecraft stories if good ol HP was interested more in intellectual musings than tentacles, as in this case where an infinite book from nowhere apparently seeks to drive men mad. In fact, for a friendly Latin American fellow he seems to enjoy stories where irrational objects do irrational things and nearly drive someone nuts in the process, with "The Disk", "Blue Tigers" and "Shakespeare's Memory" all having the same premise of an impossible thing not working out well for anyone involved.

It all adds up to one heck of a career. Considering how many stories there are in the book (most not long at all although they certainly aren't light reads) its amazing to see how few even "average" stories he has in here . . . in every tale there's an interesting scenario to ponder, a fascinating angle on an idea put forth, a number of interesting turns of phrase. There's wonder and a little bit of horror and a lot of musing on memory and the nature of stories. I can't say its for everyone but as far as esoteric things go, its got a broader potential audience than almost everything else I've read. For people who like fables, who like fantasies, who like stories that don't go on for fifty pages, who like philosophy in a palatable form, who like authors that like to be both serious and have fun. There are probably smaller collections of Borges out there, so maybe a person on the fence might not want to dive into the whole kaboodle but the thing is you could have ten people assemble a "Best Of" and beyond a few key stories probably get ten different lineups . . . he's that varied and that consistent so there's really no reason if you're interested in this kind of thing to not go whole hog and worst case pick and choose instead of plowing through like I did (probably the smarter idea, as if it gives you more time to let the stories sink in . . . but I have a large backlog so there's no time for dallying). The best of these stories stick with you immediately while the remainder linger in the subconscious, emerging as slightly new ways of seeing, not so much like getting new glasses as realizing you had the right lenses the whole time, it was only the world that needed to be adjusted.