From Publishers Weekly
The author first met Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) at a New York City poetry reading in 1968; their friendship deepened through the following years in encounters held in Buenos Aires and Cambridge, Mass. In this intimate, invaluable portrait, Barnstone, a professor of comparative literature at Indiana University, presents the poet-storyteller as a figure of paradox and contradictions. Nearly blind in his last decades, Borges longed for his life to end; he was obsessed with the instant after death that, he hoped, would reveal the mysteries of the universe. We see Borges, in place of the popular image of the cerebral metaphysician, as an itinerant sage, a tender lover who married his muse Maria Kodama on his deathbed, a troubled sleeper whose nightmares were filled with mazes. Barnstone's fluent translations of Borges's verses enliven these reminiscences and conversations. Photos.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Library Journal
This whimsical account intersperses random recollections of desultory musings on such topics as death, suicide, and, especially, literature, with both pithy sayings ("We are always inventing the past") and snatches of poetry from Argentine master Jorge Luis Borges. As outtakes from Barnstone's journal, transcribed during the 1970s and 1980s, about his worldwide travels and encounters with Borges, the reminiscences smack of deja vu, recalling in particular his more illuminating Borges at Eighty ( LJ 2/1/82. o.p.), from which he has cloned an entire interview. The final product is a work that is too much Barnstone and not enough Borges. Not an essential purchase. (Photos not seen.)-- Lawrence Olszewski, OCLC, Dublin, Ohio
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
