A Universal History of Iniquity

In his first collection of tales, A UNIVERSAL HISTORY OF INIQUITY, Borges serves up a delicious mingling of fictionalized fact and semifactual fiction. Though the stories contained in this volume pale in comparison to much of his later work, they nonetheless sparkle with the genius of a master in the making. For discerning readers who are yet to discover the literary wonders of Jorge Luis Borges, the bite-size yarns in this slim compilation are certain to provide a delightful introduction.

Jorge Luis Borges is so well known for his magical, often strange fiction that it seems a bit weird that his first book was sort-of-nonfiction. In fact, "A Universal History of Iniquity" is a fairly interesting book, in which Borges spins some fanciful details for the lives of great criminals. It's a fascinating read, though his writing is still dogged by first-time-writer awkwardness in some of the stories. Using words as a paintbrush, Borges explores the slavery-era South, the Wild West, the medieval Middle-East and Japan, Chinese seas, and the dreary streets of twentieth-century American cities. And the people he checks out are almost as colourful, starting out with a silver-tongued, slave-murdering outlaw and a "simple" man who was convinced to impersonate an aristocrat. But his iniquitous people get even more interesting after that -- a Chinese widow who became a magnificent pirate, a brutal street urchin who became a legendary Western outlaw, a prominent gangster, a Japanese courtier who destroyed a lord (and incurred the wrath of his samurai), and a veiled prophet who created a citadel of devoted followers, and his own dark religion... but whose veil hid a terrifying secret. And Borges finishes it off with a few more tales more suited to his style -- first there's the gritty, quirky "Man on Pink Corner." And then he addresses some legendary iniquitous people -- from Swedenborg, Richard Francis Burton, "1001 Nights," and the readapted tale of a callous deacon's broken promises. "A Universal History of Iniquity" was Borges' first collection of stories, and with the exception of a few short stories, his first published works. So he was a little wobbly here as he balanced between telling the life story of his iniquitous people, and embroidering their stories with his lush prose and fictionalized accounts. Most of the time, he's quite good. In fact, his gorgeous prose embellishes already larger-than-life tales -- he paints lush, murmuring plantations, desert citadels, and houses built by angels. His prose isn't quite as steady as it later was, but has the vibrant intensity that readers would expect ("A landscape dazzlingly underlain with gold and silver, a windblown, dizzying landscape of monumental mesas and delicate colouration..."). Problem is, he doesn't seem very interested in grubby urban streets and dusty Western towns, so these stories feature Borges' writing at its starkest -- it's just not as fascinating when he's putting out the facts without his gorgeous descriptions. But when there's a larger-than-life element, Borges' famed writing unfolds like a rose. The story of Hakim the Weaver seems like something Borges might have dreamed up, had it not been based on reality -- the blinding hubris, the dark new heresy of endless hells and murky heavens, the bejeweled veils and masks, and the terrible secret that this moving prophet is hiding. And he really blooms with the last few stories, all of which come from older stories. "A Un

I don't really need a separate copy of A Universal History, since I already own the Collected Fictions. But I am fascinated by Penguin's use of M.C. Escher's prints as cover art for English editions of Borges' various short collections, and especially the pairing of this particular Escher with this particular Borges. Escher's "Snakes" has the serpents twined through chain mail. Perhaps Quixote has at last been devoured by his demons? (Borges' fictions are footnotes to Cervantes but take place in realities that might have been carved by Escher.) The snakes also outline a hollow crucifix and suggest three 6's. Behind this cover, deep within those thin vignettes, Borges' villains are hollow inside the crust of legend and reputation that gives them shape. Probably neither Borges nor Escher would have admitted liking this iniquitous juxtaposition, but they might have tolerated it for those of us who appreciate an occasional obvious image. Certainly Borges would have appreciated a revisionist rumor that Escher secretly carved this image, his last, to illustrate the cover of Borges' work. So let us begin our reimagining of all of human history, which is to say the history of iniquity, with this newly created fact!

Borges first book of short stories is as good and entertaining as anything he wrote. It is probably not the first thing to read by him, though, simply because here he is still "testing" out his style. Do not misunderstand me. These stories have a style of its own, perfectly matching its kind and atmsphere. Only, it is not The Lybrary of Babel or The South... The book is composed of seven caricaturesque and tragic stories of real but not very well known historical characters (all of them linked to some crime or other); six brief pieces written by Borges as if he were someone else, or taken from imaginary books; and one story (Man on a pink corner) that is considered his first "all by himself" short-story, a crime situated in the 1900's slums of Buenos Aires with a twisted end and unique in Borges' ouvre for his use of slang and street language. Fun to read.

there is none that doeth good." Jorge Luis Borges is thought by many to be the 20th century's greatest Spanish-language writer. Borges was a poet, essayist and short story writer. Although born in Argentina in 1899, Borges spent most of his early years in Europe until his family returned to Buenos Aires in 1921. "A Universal History of Iniquity", originally published as "A Universal History of Infamy" was published in 1935. The stories represent a collection of stories originally published in the Argentine newspaper Critica between 1933 and 1934. The stories were a huge success for the newspaper and established Borges as a writer of the first rank in Argentina. Each of the stories in Universal History of Iniquity was designed by Borges to give his newspaper readers a small glimpse of the evil that men (and sometimes women) do. They vary from slave owning states in the pre-U.S. Civil War south in "The Cruel Redeemer Lazarus Morell", to the China Seas in "The Widow Ching - Pirate", to feudal Japan in "The Uncivil Teacher of Court Etiquette Kotsuke no Suke", Turkistan in "Hakim, the Masked Dyer of Merv" and the mean streets of Buenos Aires in "Man on Pink Corner". Borges acknowledges that these stories were all loosely based on little known historical treatises, the Arabian Nights, and other pieces of fiction. Lazarus Morell was clearly an homage to Mark Twain's Mississippi River stories. Although this is Borges earliest work one can already see the creative, almost whimsical approach he takes to the art of telling a story. He constantly throws the reader off balance and engages in little acts of mis-direction, perhaps starting a story by telling the reader he will not set out the facts behind a story and then proceed to do just that. In the Preface to the First Edition, Borges writes that certain techniques are "overly used: mismatched lists, abrupt transitions, the reduction of a person's life to two or three scenes." While these are certainly valid self-criticisms the reader should remember, as Borges was no doubt aware, that these stories were written for publication in newspapers with severe word limitations. I thought the condensed nature of the stories heightened their impact and think that perhaps Borges was engaging in yet another act of misdirection. I came to this book after reading Danilo Kis' "A Tomb for Boris Davidovich". The structure and theme of Tomb for Boris Davidovich was intended by Kis to be part of a literary polemic between Kis and Borges, specifically concerning the title of Borge's Universal History of Iniquity. Kis seven stories all involved iniquities performed by those involved in the Stalinist purges of the 1930s, a horror that Kis felt made Borges' iniquities look quaint by comparison. Kis asserted that the universal infamies related by Borges were those of gangsters, pirates and highwaymen. Kis argues that as far as infamy was concerned, "infamy is when in the name of the idea of a better world for whi