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By the time of his death in 1986, Borges had been granted old master status by almost everybody (except, alas, the gentlemen of the Swedish Academy). Yet his work remained dispersed among a half-dozen different collections, some of them increasingly hard to find. Andrew Hurley has done readers a great service, then, by collecting all the stories in a single, meticulously translated volume. It's a pleasure to be reminded that Borges's style--poetic, dreamlike, and compounded of innumerable small surprises--was already in place by 1935, when he published A Universal History of Iniquity: "The earth we inhabit is an error, an incompetent parody. Mirrors and paternity are abominable because they multiply and affirm it." (Incidentally, the thrifty author later recycled the second of these aphorisms in his classic bit of bookish metaphysics, "Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Teris.") The glories of his middle period, of course, have hardly aged a day. "The Garden of the Forking Paths" remains the best deconstruction of the detective story ever written, even in the post-Auster era, and "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote" puts the so-called death of the author in pointed, hilarious perspective.
But Hurley's omnibus also brings home exactly how consistent Borges remained in his concerns. As late as 1975, in "Avelino Arredondo," he was still asking (and occasionally even answering) the same riddles about time and its human repository, memory: "For the man in prison, or the blind man, time flows downstream as though down a slight decline. As he reached the midpoint of his reclusion, Arredondo more than once achieved that virtually timeless time. In the first patio there was a wellhead, and at the bottom, a cistern where a toad lived; it never occurred to Arredondo that it was the toad's time, bordering on eternity, that he sought." Throughout, Hurley's translation is crisp and assured (although this reader will always have a soft spot for "Funes, the Memorious" rather than "Funes, His Memory.") And thanks to his efforts, Borgesians will find no better--and no more pleasurable--rebuttal of the author's description of himself as "a shy sort of man who could not bring himself to write short stories." --James Marcus --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
In 1517, Fray Bartolome de las Casas, feeling great pity for the Indians who grew worn and lean in the drudging infernos of the Antillean gold mines, proposed to Emperor Charles V that Negroes be brought to the isles of the Caribbean, so that they might grow worn and lean in the drudging infernos of the Antillean gold mines. Read the first page
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Most helpful customer reviews
12 of 14 people found the following review helpful
1.0 out of 5 stars
Andrew Hurley's translations are a travesty,
By
This review is from: Collected Fictions (Paperback)
I regrettably have to concur with the readers from Portland and Panama - as they indicate this collection is a tragedy, as well as a travesty. Here are a couple of examples from my desert island short story, Tlon Uqbar, Orbius Tertius:- Andrew Hurley has: "The mirror troubled the far end of a hallway in a large country house..." and AH: "... A literal (though also laggardly) reprint..." He doesn't seem to have any respect for Borges' style of writing. Really disappointing. And Carlos Fuentes, a notable admirer of Borges, shared this view on reviewing the Hurley edition. Avoid.
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful
1.0 out of 5 stars
Terrible translation,
By A Customer
This review is from: Collected Fictions (Paperback)
Thank God! I was beginning to think I had gone mad. Someone else had the courage and the lucidity to point out that this is a terrible translation of Borges. Sadly, many young readers have not had access to the translations of Di Giovanni, Alastair Reid, John Hollander, Anthony Kerrigan, and yes, even the late great Selden Rodman. It was in reading Selden Rodman's translation of the poem 'Limits' as compared to the translation in the compilation by Monegal & Reid that it came home to me how important it is that Borges be translated by someone who comprehends Borges. (If it may be said that anyone truly comprehends Borges) Rodman's translation is brilliant as is Alastair Reid's; but they are almost two separate poems. Amazon offers used titles and it is important for those who want to read Borges correctly that they seek out the translations of Norman Thomas Di Giovanni as they are infinitely superior to the translations of Andrew Hurley, so much so that Hurley actually does harm to Borges, while Di Giovanni, allows the magic that Borges created to be accessible to the reader. Di Giovanni worked hand in hand with Borges. They were friends and Di Giovanni understood what Borges was about. What I believe has occurred is that Borges second wife Maria Kodama did not like Di Giovanni and has attempted to stifle the translations of Di Giovanni. Kodama is an intelligent woman, but intelligence is no guarantee that one can comprehend the hidden meanings of Borges writing. Doubtless she means well, but if she has chosen Hurley over Di Giovanni for personal reasons, she has done a tremendous injustice to the legacy of Jorge Luis Borges. Get a used copy with a translation by Di Giovanni. You will learn a great deal more about what Borges was saying. This translation by Hurley is an insult to Jorge Luis Borges.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Blow your mind,
By
This review is from: Collected Fictions (Paperback)
To have all of Borges' prose fiction in one volume is such a treat. I was lead to Borges by Umberto Eco and I have enjoyed every moment I have spent enthralled in Borges' short stories. One can certainly see how he has been influenced by Chesterton and Poe and how, in turn, he has influenced Eco and so many other modern day writers who now mix the natural and supernatural in their tales. These fantastic tales of labyrinths, mirrors, parallel dimensions, non-linear time, dreams, imaginary documents and fictional authors, as well as his folk tales of a past Argentina, will simultaneously mesmerize and frustrate readers: mesmerize because the reader will be carried away into the bizarre worlds of Borges' imagination; frustrate because it will leave the reader wishing for more and longer works (it is especially sad for me that Borges never wrote a novel...thankfully Eco translates some of the main ideas within Borges' short stories into his novels).Some reviewers bemoan Hurley's translation as being less literary than other previous translations, and the language can tend to be somewhat plain. Personally, whatever you may think about any given translation or which style you may prefer, what we do know about Borges is that he would have approved of multiple translations - the more the merrier - and he would have relished the places where his stories differed between translations and laughed at the arguments the differences have caused. After all, could anything be more Borgesian? He translated several great works into Spanish and was noted for the subtle changes he sometimes consciously introduced. While all of Borges is definitely not for everyone, everyone should at least read a few of his stories. Some good starters would be "The Garden of Forking Paths", "Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius", "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote", and "The Circular Ruins." These tales will give you a great cross section of his works and they will blow your mind at the same time.
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