Labyrinths: Selected Stories and Other Writings by Jorge Luis Borges
My rating: 3/5 cats
why haven’t i read borges before now?? no one knows. people always push him on me – “how can you like marquez if you haven’t read borges??” “you like donoso – you should read borges.” “machado is good, but you should read borges.” so – fine – i did. and i am utterly underwhelmed. so there.
i am learning during my “summer of missed classix” that most of the books i have for some reason or another overlooked were probably overlooked for a reason. i naturally gravitate towards what i like, and i seem to have a filter that prevents me from picking up too many books i don’t. when i force it, this happens. i liked some of the stories, but borges isn’t for everyone (although scrolling down my “friends who have read” list, it looks as though all my friends gave this five stars). i’m not accusing you bitches of inflating your ratings, but i have the sense with borges that some people are guilted into liking him. or pretending that they like him more than they do because he’s borges. but i won’t be. because i am not ashamed of my intellectual shortcomings. i embrace them. i am incapable of abstract thought. fact. as hard as i try, that whole achilles/tortoise thing? does not compute. so all of this hexagon spiraling into hexagon on top of hexagon… i feel like i am back in college, where every single person i ever knew had a copy of this book. and was a stoner. coincidence? maybe, but this is all just classic stoner thinking-chains – reflections, labyrinths, it’s perfect for that kind of mindset. “dooood, imagine we were in a hexagon right now??” and i know this makes sense to some people with philosophical and theological mindbents, but for me its almost pain. there were about 6 stories i liked, but the first few almost made me weep with trying to find the value in them. sorry, borges. we were never meant to be.
mmmmkay – it seems that there are those who think it would be valuable “in a book review” to list the stories i did like. so: the shape of the sword, theme of the traitor and the hero, death and the compass, the secret miracle, three versions of judas, story of the warrior and the captive, emma zunz, the house of asterion, and the waiting. more than i thought i liked, but still – a sad minority.
