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Summary: WHAT'S THE SECRET OF THE SECRET SECT?
Review: Several of the previous reviewers of LABYRINTHS have done an excellent job of discussing its nature and general contents as well as addressing Borges, his background, and his philosophical bent. Rather than going back over material previously covered, I'd like to address a few of the short stories, or as he refers to them, fictions. I'll stick to these and leave the essays and parables to another reviewer.A few of his fictions, such as "The Shape of the Sword," are fairly straightforward narrative accounts. "The Shape of the Sword" does have a bit of a twist at the end that makes it very worth reading, but it is not on this type of story that Borges built his reputation. That reputation comes more from such fictions as "The Lottery in Babylon," "The Library of Babel," and "The Sect of The Phoenix," among others. I hope that a short discussion of these three will whet one's appetite to read Borges in his own words. "The Lottery In Babylon" is the story of the evolution of a simple lottery into an all encompassing game of life. It leaves one with the philosophical question as to whether life is controlled by some master gamesmen or is all a matter of random chance. "The Library of Babel" imagines a world composed of a library without physical or temporal end. You cannot read this story and not wonder about the concept of infinity. That concept is obviously one of physical, metaphysical, and philosophical import. A thoroughly thought-provoking story. "The Sect of the Phoenix" is a bit sneaky. Borges discusses a sectarion group with a secret rite that has infused itself throughout our world. This rite, though almost universally practiced, is rather hush-hush in polite society. Borges never overtly reveals what this secret rite is, but somewhere along the line, the reader uncovers the mystery and will probably kick himself and say "I should have seen that coming." I can't imagine reading this book without becoming more aware of the mysteries around us.
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Summary: The bibliography is a lie!
Review: The back cover of this book glibly promises "a biographical and critical introduction, as well as an extensive bibliography." The introduction is there, but you will search this volume in vain for the slightest hint of a bibliography, extensive or otherwise. JLB's stories are excellent, but if you're expecting the promised extensive bibliography, prepare to be bitterly disappointed.
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Summary: The bibliography is a lie!
Review: The back cover of this book glibly promises "a biographical and critical introduction, as well as an extensive bibliography." The introduction is there, but you will search this volume in vain for the slightest hint of a bibliography, extensive or otherwise. JLB's stories are excellent, but if you're expecting the promised extensive bibliography, prepare to be bitterly disappointed.
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Summary: superlative writing
Review: The short stories which comprise "Labyrinths" are all amazing. Borges is able to put his ideas into words unlike any writer I have studied. Although his vocabulary is extremely advanced (keep a dictionary handy), it does not detract from the essence of the work. One of my top 5 books. If you enjoy Ginsberg, Kerouac, Marquez, or Henry Miller, you will enjoy "Labyrinths".
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Summary: Oh time thy pyramids . . .
Review: These stories are unlike anything else I know of in literature. Borges is a completely original genius, whose erudition and playfulness is exceeded only by his love of language, and the unforgettable structure of his prose. Like Joyce, like Nabokov, like no other writer, Borges creates his own world, which exists at an oblique angle to our own. Probably nothing I have ever read has had such an effect on my thinking as these five-page stories. They are like metaphysical poems in prose. And they are endlessly entertaining. I must have read "The Library of Babel" and "Pierre Menard, Author of the *Quixote*" dozens of times each. And the short essays at the end of this volume are in their own way just as entrancing. He is a magical writer -- one of the great artists of this century.
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Summary: Bad Boring SF
Review: This book is filled with short stories of bad boring science fiction. References, complete with page numbers, to non existent books only add to the tedium
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Summary: Short imaginative stories
Review: This is an imaginative collection of short stories. I'll give you some teasers to see if you'd like it. There is a mythical planet where no nouns are spoken. There is a lottery offering penalties as well as rewards, a randomly selected future. A man dreamed another living man into existence, which taught him something startling about himself. The universe is a library. A man, about to face a Nazi firing squad, asks God for time out - and gets it. A river gives immortality to a certain tribe, allowing us to see what immortals are like. A girl's father was framed for a crime and committed suicide, motivating the girl to take revenge. A hunted man dreamed of killing his assassins, and is eventually in their presence - what does he do? These are just some of the situations and stories in Labyrinths. A similar book by Borges is called Dreamtigers. There is a character who appears in both books - the poet Homer. Homer is one of the immortals in Labyrinths, and is a young boy in Dreamtigers.
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Summary: A list of the great listmaker's virtues
Review: This work contains twenty- three great Borges stories, Borges parables including the classical 'Borges and I' , literary and philosophical speculations of great interest, puzzling plots which lead to surprising sentences, labyrinths, mysteries of time and infinity, descriptions of Buenos Aires and its environment, daggers and other macho paraphanelia, dreams and misdirected destinations, satirical scholarship, mock memory, a story of a child who remembers everything and so is a mind lost, posturings of heroism and duels to the death , surfaces of a finer taste , exotic recombinations of books from many different libraries, endless rereadings of Stevenson, Quixote, Chesterton and a nineteenth - century librarian's favorites, Kafkalike Heraclitean fire, a mixture of riches an abundance of material to make the reader wonder at how such a unique mind, soul and writer came into the world, incomparable great literature which will influence the readers' reading for the rest of their lives.
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Summary: I have written this before and I will write this again...
Review: You have read this before and you will read this again. The cycle of things revolves in the sphere of mirrors and passages whose centre is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere. The exits of all labyrinths inevitably are also the entrances. Philip K. Dick, Dante and Chretien De Troyes imagined parts of Borges tales and he has imagined parts of theirs. When you have read the last page you will inevitably find yourself back at the first, and so it will continue.
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