Borges and His Fiction: A Guide to His Mind and Art

In random reading over the years, I never responded enthusiastically to the fiction of Jorge Luis Borges. This year I resolved to read the "Collected Fictions" of Borges, and because of my past indifference I figured I could use some guidance. So, in conjunction with "Collected Fictions", I also read this book, BORGES AND HIS FICTION, by Gene H. Bell-Villada. (The edition I have is the revised edition, in a sturdily bound paperback published in 1999.) This is an excellent guide, better than most of its ilk. The first three chapters provide, relatively briefly, a context for reading Borges: the cultural milieu of Buenos Aires and Argentina; an overview of Borges's life and personality; and, thirdly, "What Borges Did for Prose Fiction." The next part, and majority of the book, discusses the individual works of fiction, with greater attention to the major short stories (such as "Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" and "The Library of Babel"). The book concludes with a short section on Borges's place in literature. Despite the fact that Bell-Villada is a college professor, BORGES AND HIS FICTION is not donnish or pedantic. In his Preface, the author writes: "A good deal of current literary criticism--with its name- and jargon-dropping, its leaden prose, its joyless professionalism, and its technocratic presumptions to being 'value-free'--seems written for the purpose of impressing other critics rather than enlightening readers." How true. By and large, Bell-Villada avoids those pitfalls and commendably adheres to his mission statement of enlightening readers. To be sure, they must be serious readers, but they need not be graduate students in Latin American literature. I found BORGES AND HIS FICTION quite helpful; I rather doubt that I could have read as much of "Collected Fictions" as I did without the assistance of Bell-Villada. On a personal note, I will add that, despite this book, I still do not respond favorably to Borges's fiction. I am much more intrigued by the man than by his work. Much like W.G. Sebald and Javier Marias, two writers of fiction I do respond to enthusiastically, Borges marries (or confuses) the factual and the imaginary (fantastic), but I sense that Borges does it more as a game, an intellectual exercise, than as an attempt to derive truth or meaning. His lodestar, rather than truth or meaning, is stories and constructs that are, for him, intellectually or aesthetically pleasing. And I guess I don't share his aesthetic sensibilities. But my reservations regarding Borges do not extend to Bell-Villada's book. Even fans of Borges probably would profit from reading BORGES AND HIS FICTION.

This book was reissued in a new edition by U. of Texas Press in 1999. In fact you used to list it regularly. Why is it not there now?

This is a superb introduction to the fiction of the great Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges that should serve as a model for works of its type. All too often, studies of major authors degenerate into studies not of the writer in question but meta-studies on all manner of theoretical matters. The best criticism takes the reader not into the heart of a theory, but into the work of the writer being discussed, and Bell-Villada takes the reader deep into the heart of Borges?s strange and marvelous world. The book is divided into three sections. The first part is largely biographical, hitting the highpoints of Borges?s life, as well as exploring some aspects of his personality. The author also discusses many of the relevant aspects of Argentine society and politics. This is done with considerable sympathy with Borges, despite the obvious sharp political differences between the author and Borges. In fact, one of the great appeals of the book as a whole is the fact that the author feels some distance from Borges at a number of points. All too often, critics turn into fans of writers, tending to see in them other versions of themselves, often becoming admirers because of a host of shared values. The author clearly finds Borges?s political positions late in life troubling, but hardly admires him as a creative writer any the less for that. The bulk of the book consists of finely nuanced, detailed discussions of Borges?s major fictional works. For those unaware, Borges, while famed as one of the great writers of the past century, actually produced a rather minute body of work. His entire fictional output in English translation amounts to scarcely more than 500 pages. Of this output, much of that?mainly his first collection of stories and much of his later work?falls short of his best work. Most of his great work is contained in FICCIONES and EL ALEPH, an astonishingly small body of work for a writer of such stature. Bell-Villada discusses all of these stories with great insight, including such details surrounding their publication or context that are relevant. The final section of the book details with Borges?s final works, and includes an interesting discussion of some of the political questions connected with his work. One thing that makes this book especially useful is that it can be equally useful both to specialists in the field of Latin American literature and readers encountering Borges?s work for the first time. And betraying my own bias, it never, ever gets bogged down in mere theorizing. The focus is always on Borges?s work itself, and not on considerations extraneous matters.