Is Borges the 20th Century’s most important writer? | Hacker News Reader

Is Borges the 20th Century’s most important writer?

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72 pointswslh51 comments

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.

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.

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.

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?

I understand what you are saying, but Borges was always very thankful to American scholars having first discovered him at a time when he felt no one in Argentina cared about him.

As many things in Latin America (and in non-US countries), it wasn't until the US praised him that he became popular back home.

English-speaking scholars actually loved Borges and wanted to get him published soon and help him out.

Brasilian author Paulo Coelho is another great one. His novel "The Alchemist" is a classic.

You must be kidding, right?

> English literary culture is [...] indifferent [...] to writers in other languages.

That's particularly true of booksellers in England, so I'm not sure whether the resulting landscape is a cause or an effect of commercial arrangements. Outside of the London - Oxbridge axis, it's very hard to find bookshops stocking anything more than US/UK writers. Coming from Italy (where it's often hard to find works by Italian authors in the average bookshop), it was a shock I never really recovered from.

Really? Borges casts an enormous shadow across modern American literary culture; you'll be hard pressed to find anyone who is indifferent to him. Like Nabokov, this is partially due to his academic influence, but his writing was hugely influential as well. Most American college students with a literary interest will have at least read the Ficciones.

Obviously Julio Cortazar: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julio_Cortázar

You'll see patterns, pretty as can be.

For me, László Krasznahorkai, Carsten Jensen, Karl Ove Knausgaard, and Roberto Bolaño are some of the best recent non-English writers around.

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.

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.

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.

Raymond Queneau, Italo Calvino, Stanisław Lem.

But, as an outsider, they seem reasonably well known among english speakers (and so is Borges).

It's been some time since I read Lem, but much of his work seemed to be a sort of reinterpretation of Borges. To be clear, I found that a very good thing!

Roberto Bolaño

"One thing that bothers me about the English literary culture is how indifferent it is to writers in other languages."

I'm not sure I follow. Why would English "literary culture" care about content in other languages? Are we talking about translations here?

Because, you know, if it's not about the translations. Then I'd pretty much just go ahead and answer your conundrum: "It's in a different language."

Karol Wojtyła

Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Not mentioned yet.

Isabella Allende, Albert Camus, Michel Houellebecq, Günter Grass, Carlos Fuentes, ...

I take the bait:

Herman Hesse (Steppenwolf if you have to read one book from him).

I preferred The Glass Bead Game.

Also, as with Goethe, don't bother with the English translations.

Yes, I am recommending learning German. You'll thank me.

By "you" I mean anyone reading this, not you, johnchristopher. As you have already read Hesse's work. I presume.

Portuguese writer José Saramago

"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.

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...

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...

It's a requirement imposed by lobbying of the UK media companies. Any content the BBC produces for its international service must be funded by private-sector sources such as advertisement or sponsorship, since the license fee is required to be used only for UK-targeted programming. But then such content cannot be shown within the UK, because that would be considered competition with the private-sector domestic media.

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.

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?

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.

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...

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.

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.

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.

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...

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

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

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

This is the one I have:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0140286802/?tag=mh0b-20&hvadid=3524...

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.

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

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.

The google doodle commemorating Borges' birthday was inspired by this short story. http://www.google.com/doodles/112th-birthday-of-jorge-luis-b...

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?

You will not find them in Project Gutenberg for sure. María Kodama, Borges widow and heir tirelessly defends the rights. She prosecuted some visible sites that published the books.

If you don't mind skullduggery

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

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.

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.

Nerd sniping: how many books are in the library of babel?

Here's a PDF:

http://www.cultureofdoubt.net/download/docs_cod/library%20of...

Wikipedia has calculations, if you want to cheat:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Library_of_Babel

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

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