The Book of Sand

Rating:
Summary: Borges hits his private bullseye yet again
Review: I don't know much about Jorge Luis Borges the man; I'm not an expert on him as a writer either. However, I do know that nobody can write a certain kind of story better than he. His specialty is to describe, in short, succinct sentences of utmost clarity, situations of eerie strangeness, earthy gaucho confrontations, or encounters with arcane religious figures. THE BOOK OF SAND is another volume of such stories that range over many centuries and thousands of miles of geography. Some stories appear to be ancient legends, others to be autobiographical, but all, I would say, are total figments of a superb imagination. If I knew more about the writer, I might know if he had a kind of tongue-in-cheek humor or not. In a few places, just a few, some sentences have the ring of earnest or forced whimsy--a sort of wrong note in a string sonata. But, if intentional, then I have misjudged. "The Night of the Gifts" is a classic gaucho tale combined with the element of coming of age. "Utopia of a Tired Man" is a gem, which would probably grow on readers as they get older, but which at any age packs a punch in its mere seven pages. If you have ever read Borges, you will certainly like this collection. If you haven't, this might be a good place to begin, a vintage selection of the work of one of the 20th century's great writers.

Rating:
Summary: Borges hits his private bullseye yet again
Review: I don't know much about Jorge Luis Borges the man; I'm not an expert on him as a writer either. However, I do know that nobody can write a certain kind of story better than he. His specialty is to describe, in short, succinct sentences of utmost clarity, situations of eerie strangeness, earthy gaucho confrontations, or encounters with arcane religious figures. THE BOOK OF SAND is another volume of such stories that range over many centuries and thousands of miles of geography. Some stories appear to be ancient legends, others to be autobiographical, but all, I would say, are total figments of a superb imagination. If I knew more about the writer, I might know if he had a kind of tongue-in-cheek humor or not. In a few places, just a few, some sentences have the ring of earnest or forced whimsy--a sort of wrong note in a string sonata. But, if intentional, then I have misjudged. "The Night of the Gifts" is a classic gaucho tale combined with the element of coming of age. "Utopia of a Tired Man" is a gem, which would probably grow on readers as they get older, but which at any age packs a punch in its mere seven pages. If you have ever read Borges, you will certainly like this collection. If you haven't, this might be a good place to begin, a vintage selection of the work of one of the 20th century's great writers.

Rating:
Summary: ONE OF THE BEST SHORT STORY WRITERS OUT THERE, PERIOD!
Review: Speculative fiction writer Harlan Ellison was the one who introduced me to Jorge Luis Borges. In one of his introductions to his story collections, he was saying how he felt unfit to sweep up Borges' shadow, or something like that. He went on further to say that it was a pity that Borges didn't get the Noble Prize for Literature. I agree. As you can probably tell, I'm a HUGE Harlan Ellison fan, but I like Borges just as much. Anyway, this was the first book by Borges that I read, and I was MOST IMPRESSED. Here's what I remember of it: There's a short story in there somewhere where Borges says something to the extent that--the printing press was a bad invention. What! An author, whose very livelyhood depends on the modern methods of printing said THAT?! You'll have to read the story to see his explanation, but I was impressed with it. The Congress is supposed to be one of Borges' favorite stories. Personally, I didn't understand it that well, but I'm not saying that I hate it. My favorite story of the bunch? The Book of Sand. A very well written short story about a book with as many pages as there are grains of sand. The ending reminded me of the ending to Raiders of the Lost Ark in a way. If you like Ellison, Tolkien, Spanish history, literature, etc. you will like Borges a lot!

Rating:
Summary: The Book of Sand
Review: The Book of Sand has thirteen stories - an accidental or fatal number, the author tells us, but not magical - and they all, more or less, deal with the same theme. While, in each and every story, there is a mystery, an enigma, a puzzle that may or may not be solved, the answer is always the same. Borges wants us to look beyond the artifices of our lives, beyond the linguistic, economic, political and religious restrictions we have given ourselves, and see the world for what it actually is.

One of the - many and varied - literary techniques that Borges uses is that of the literary reference. Always, the narrator uses an obscure reference to better make a point, or to expand the depth of a scene or image, using Tacitus, Sigurd and Brynhild, Ibsen, more. Yet, nestled quietly in between real authors and works are fictional creations, authors that are clever combinations of existing writers, works with titles that are pure fancy. The point that Borges is making is, I believe, that, with the passing of time and the simultaneously corrupting and enhancing efforts of language and culture, it does not matter if these works ever existed or not. To be affected by them it enough, to make a point or drive home an idea is enough. Four hundred years on, invoking the 'fighting windmills' phrase, does it matter if Cervantes ever really existed? Does it matter if I have or have not read the exploits of the man from La Mancha? In Borges world, the answer is no.

In one story, 'Utopia of a Tired Man', Eudoro Acevedo is transplanted from his home in the 20th century, to a place many thousands of years into the future. He meets a man, who explains the fall and rise again of mankind, who reveals the future history until 'now', when everything is different. He explains:

'The planet was populated by collective ghosts - Canada, Brazil, the Swiss Congo, and the Common Market. Almost no one knew anything of the history that preceded those platonic entities, but, of course, they knew every last detail of the most recent congress of pedagogies, or of imminent breakdowns in diplomatic relations, or of statements issued by Presidents...These things were read to be forgotten, for, only hours later, other trivialities would blot them out.'

This lengthy quote is perhaps Borges' most blatant and clear attack on the culture in which he lived. He quite obviously has a love of nature and literature and life, and bemoans the seeming lack of interest that most other people display. While the rest of the story is an interesting look at the future, it is clearly fanciful, and not an ideal world for Borges. Rather, it was written to make us think, something we just don't do enough.

The stories, composed when Borges was over 70, are for the most part an exercise in memory. A narrator of one - Ulrike - will remember a fleeting love. Another story has a group of men conversing on the problem of knowledge, which inspires an old man, 'a bit lost in metaphysics', to share a story of his youth. This is fairly typical for Borges, but is especially poignant here. The characters are remembering sad or strange or horrifying times, and nearly every single narrator mentions needing to share the tale before they die. Borges, at seventy, probably shared this opinion.

I have not taken the time to summarise Borges' short stories, for to do so would be to lose the point. Borges is capable of compressing a vast myriad of ideas and thoughts into a seven page short story, and to further reduce such themes and suggestions would be to lose them. Instead, I have commented upon what they meant to me, and what, I believe, they meant to him. Perhaps I am wrong, perhaps not, but that is the genius of Borges. He is infinitely interpretable, and should be: For each of us, there is an interpretation that fits, and for each of us, it is the right one.

Rating:
Summary: Utopia of a great wirter
Review: The review's title is, of course, a paraphrase of one of the best stories in this collection, one written when Borges was already old and wiser than ever. His wisdom is a disenchanted one, but then again he was never an exactly cheerful writer. His scope is infinite, as he deals not only with far distant lands but also with entirely imaginary ones. One of the most peculiar characteristics of Borges, acutely present in this slim volume, is his constant mixing up of reality with fantasy, of different epochs, and of true and imaginary identities.

The best example of this is the first tale, "The Other", an encounter between the young and the old Borges. Both are sitting on a bench by a river, but the young one is in Geneva in the twenties, while the old is in Cambridge, Mass., in 1969. Their conversation is friendly but distant, and it is simply impossible to read it without imagining what you would say to your younger self if you had a chance to talk to him. All the stories are good -vintage Borges-, but some of my favorites are: "Utopia of a Tired Man", a chilling encounter with a man from the distant future; "The Night of Gifts", a gaucho story of learning about sex and death in a single night; "There are more things" (English title in the original), an homage to H.P. Lovecraft; "The Book of Sand", about an infinite book.

This mature collection is a strong sample of Borges's best qualities: concision, brevity, high-octanage imagination, philosophical profundity without pretentiousness.

Rating:
Summary: There is no Book Borges has read that he himself
Review: There is no book Borges has read that he himself has not written. In essence he is Literature and all he ever does is read himself to himself.But because he likes games and because the world has a certain intractability it is not enough for him to lose himself in such fantasies. Instead he must sit down and sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph write these masterpieces. And so he has here written a number of small masterworks each of which gives more temptation to thought than do whole libraries of many other writers. In the story for instance 'The Other' in which two Borges' one a young man and another an aging Borges meet the conservation lingers upon who is dreaming who, and whether the real Borges is either of them. We cannot know , but as readers we can take tremendous pleasure and interest in the work of this maker of ficciones and poemes who is always rereading and rewriting himself .
These small pieces all done after Borges was seventy and already blind open the mind and the eyes to one of the great worlds of modern literature. Who reads this book reads a hombre and a very great writer indeed.