What do you make of Borges?

>I'm going to read of his stories to judge well
What have you read so far?

>if there's something deeper he's trying to say
What's wrong with you people
barf

So smug, reading your genre fiction. How far are you into The Book of The New Sun? A masterpiece right?

Ooft, that was pretty savage user, I'll give you that.

But come on, surely you understand what I mean. Considering Borges the greatest short story writer of all time is like considering (specifically latter day) Nabokov the greatest novelist of all time, something few people do. It's not so much even a slight against them, as a recognition that the "greats" are unified by certain ambitions regarding art and the world, which the other candidates (Chekhov, Hemingway, Melville etc) attempt to fulfill, and Borges deliberately eschews, choosing to wrap himself in his fiction and cocoon himself from the world. That's all well and good, but to me, he forfeits his place in the competition.

>a recognition that the "greats" are unified by certain ambitions
The same way many people (cough, cough) will insist "what matters is EMOTIONAL intelligence"? Yes, this is an exaggeration to point you towards understanding.
People who hail B as the greatest short story writer have a different idea as to what a great short story is. Even if you were the lofty humanistic type, that wouldn't be hard to fit into your system.

>all literature is equal just live and let live
>relativism

Fuck this. Art has a purpose, which is societal and important, and writers who abandon this purpose abandon also their place in the historical agon of the arts.

I heard it once said that Borges lived and died a virgin. I'm sure this is true of many writers, but in Borges' case it's significant. He's Joyce without Nora, mind without the interference of flesh, endlessly onanistic.

And it doesn't matter how much pineapple he ate beforehand; he's still just jacking off in my face.

It's a banal point, which is why it's jarring that you should need it pointed out. Let me put it another way: if you think there's a meaningful difference between Borges not doing it for you and your Chekhov not doing it for a supernatural romance reader, you're wrong.

His Wikipedia page. This is Veeky Forums

What the heck makes any of those writers more or less (((universal))) than Borges?

The vast majority of people on Earth have never read any of them, so what exactly is your criteria here?

What makes Borges so great is that, in addition to his being a master stylist, he commits himself totally to uncovering how a story is put together and how its formal components (plot, character, annotations, etc.) are just dead matter that, through the art of writing, produce the illusion of narrative. Of all the writers you listed, it's Borges who gets closest to "insight" regarding language itself - without which there would be no 'rugged stories' about Hemingway children fishing on lakes.

I still think it's perfectly reasonable for someone to prefer Chekov to Borges, but to dismiss Borges on the grounds that he's not (((universal))) or that he's "temperamental" is lazy and dumb.

Well, frankly, I don't think I'm wrong in believing there's a significant difference between those two things. In fact, both examples exhibit the same underlying assumption, that the purpose of literary works is to provide pleasure to a reader, as shown by your use of "doing it for me", the language of kink which is so often applied to art nowadays (literary turn ons and turn offs etc). And there's nothing wrong with this in moderation. But I don't for a minute believe that the reason you are here on this board is because literature just "scratches an itch" you have. People come here because the relationship they have developed with literature is one of dependence. We need what is written between the pages of our favourite works on an existential level, in order to structure and interpret the world. Furthermore, the kind of communication found in fiction, which is intimate and, dare I say, honest, in a way that's difficult to explain to a non-reader, appeals to us and seems like the most natural and easy form of communication in the world. I can't imagine anyone developing this kind of relationship with Borges.

I think the problem lies in the fact that you've scapegoated me as some kind of hyper-realist. I find Chekhov unimaginably dull, while acknowledging his talent. If I have a favourite short story (I'm not really a short story guy) it would be Bartleby, a work which is rendered powerful, precisely by and absurd and unrealistic conceit, which hints at something supernatural lying behind. My point is that, Melville, like any great writer, does not let these elements consume him. He remains faithful to his society and the real. Something Borges does not do, which is why I cannot rate him in the same canon. Another user referred to a Borges fan in this thread as a reader of fantasy, and asked him how he was enjoying Gene Wolfe. While I think the user was joking, there is an element of truth to this. If Borges is to be rated in a canon, it should be the same canon as Tolkien.

>virgin
I bet he was fucking Adolfo Casares.

>Borges lived and died a virgin
His father took him to a whore house when he was 19.

>Eh, i get the appeal

Fuck you're insufferable.

If you don't like Borges then you don't like literature at all.

And this addresses my point how?

What are your opinions towards The Trial and One Hundred Years of Solitude. Just out of curiosity.

Woah there Sally. Never once did I dismiss Borges for being "temperamental"; I'm not sure where you're pulling that from. If anything it's the opposite. I'd appreciate him being a little more temperamental, a little more passionate, but that's just personal taste.

Your point that Borges "discovers" some insight about language is true to an extent. The man does break down storytelling into formal components and demonstrate, as with a cadaver, these component parts do not themselves create life. But then this animating force, which gives life to fiction, must then be absent in Borges, must it not?

To answer your question, what makes Borges less (((universal))) than these writers is that he does not attempt to reach existential truths except in rare moments. I picked my exemplary moments from Borges for a reason. The Circular Ruin, by far his best work, contains this elemental shard of the conscious experience (note, not the human experience; I'm not trying to make a point about cats and dogs; I'm trying to diatance myself from the humanism that people are interpreting in my critique of Borges). The moment from "T, U, O.T" is an example of his failure to do so, despite such a shard existing right under his nose. His depiction of the event, the appearance of the objects, fails to capture what the attentive reader is able to grasp not in the text itself but in the idea which we take from the text and are forced to develop on our own.

Again, you all seem to think that I worship Chekhov and Hemingway. In truth, I have less tolerance for them than for Borges, though think more highly of their skill. As I said in another post Melville's Barleby is my favourite short story, though Melville is rarely recognised as a great short story writer, which is why I snuck him in at the end of my list.

I like your (((bracketing))) idea though. Why did you get that from?

He is a teller of stories that have as an underlying thread the notion that our world is not as it seems and that our knowledge of the universe and ourselves is limited. Why make castles out of clouds?

Well, I really liked One Hundred Years of Solitude. I thought it was a terrifically sad portrait of family. The idea of a generational curse working within a dynasty, especially if it is of the same flavour as similar curses working in Greek tragedy, interest me greatly. I love To The Lighthouse for a similar reason, and think it forms a very much non-obvious but truly complimentary companion piece to 100 Years of Solitude, (especially if you consider them to be descended from Greek tragedy, the family resemblance, at first obscure, becomes clear).

The trial I read a long time ago now, and I was very young when I read it, but I remember liking it. I have no idea how Kafka escaped me when I was listing great short story writers. He seems like such an obvious choice now. The Metamorphosis is fantastic. The way in which Kafka depicts deep anxiety is pertinent (though I relate a little more to the form it takes in Pynchon, since he depicts light and shade, the attempts to distract from the paranoia and anxiety with lightheartedness and jokes. I once heard it said that on a trip, when it goes bad, it helps sometimes to sing, to turn the trip around and make it pleasant again. This came to mind when I was thinking about the role of music in Pynchon. And if that's not a tangent I don't know what is.)

What's really great about Franz, is the way he takes absurd, bizarre experience and injects it with an element of relatibility, often in ways that are impossible really to unpack. We all k ow what it feels like to have been transformed into a giant bug, or to witness a criminals crimes being erg into him, or to be guilty of a crime the nature of which we will never know, yet how can we know these things? Because Kafka taps into something so deep in the human psyche that it has no choice but to emerge in this strange but familiar form, which paradoxically both alienates and draws closer, by its very nature.

So yeah I like both

It's hard not to put you in the realist's pigeonhole when your main, single even, indictment against Borges is that he runs and branches wild along ideas instead of flowing back to root. Bringing up Tolkien in a petty bid to associate him with genre-r fiction (instead of, say, new-wave SF, which he is much closer to, if only because of his influence on it) is completely missing the point. The Borges advocate could certainly be someone who prefers their philosophy sweetened with fantasy, but that's a far step from glorified escapism. Like you they are drawn to what cannot be expressed; they would likely argue that social reality is too limited a context to fully explore these ideas in, that (for those who would care) the ideas don't need to be shown contextualised in the author's social reality in order to be linked to human experience; and besides the sense of intimacy drawn from interacting with a writer on the ineffable chord is another, or perhaps a contingent, aspect of hitting the right spot. It's still fairly sexual in that way.

>(((bracketing)))
That's something to do with riffing on Jews, actually.

>Art has a purpose which is societal
Stopped reading here, I regret wasting my precious time reading your previous comments. Just stop posting, forever.

I think there are two different definitions of "realist" at play here. In one sense, I stand by my statement that I am not a realist. I do not believe that fiction must depict social reality to be relevant. In fact, I agree that fiction that deals completely in the obvious real, is indeed incapable of depicting (at least modern) reality. But in another sense, the sense in which you mean the word, I admit that I am a realist. I believe that fictional works are not magical, detached entities, but intricately part of the texture of our reality. As such, they, and their creators, are beholden to certain duties. I don't mean this in any super conservative sense. I don't think fiction ought to serve people's "needs", or further an ideology. But I think that good fiction is a balance of classical imitation and romantic expression. Too much one way, you get the kind of poetry which abandons all attempt a technique and become simply an attempt to express the poets feelings and beliefs (we all know who these poets are). But going too far the other way, you end up with someone like Borges, to whom only the aspects of fiction which exhibit technique and prowess are important.

My reference to Tolkein was not meant necessarily to disparage, though that's a fair assumption to make on this site. I simply mean to relate him to a canon of authors who intend to create worlds in their fiction. There is an assumption in Borges, and in main postmodern fiction, which does not sit right with what you rightly call my "realist" side. It's this idea of the multiplicity of worlds. This idea that when you turn on your television, you are viewing another world which is created by the media, I view as a panicked reaction to the overflow of information which Borges and his descendants had to deal with in the middle part of last century. To me (and this is more monist, than realist) there is but one universal fabric. I am even sympathetic to the idea that this fabric is language in its widest sense, the very idea of the interpretable system of signs which composes our reality. All systems of signs (what in Borgesian terms is crudely expressed as worlds) are sublimated and contextualised within a single, interdependent signifying fabric, I.e the universe.

But, as well as this, I strongly believe in the impossibility of metalanguage. There is nothing outside this grand system of signs, as well as all borders drawn between being unstable and volatile (the wasted opportunity of Tlon, Uqbar, Airbus Tertius comes to mind here). Borges' central "sin" is to misunderstand this system, and seek to gesture outside it in his fiction. Just as metalanguage is impossible, so too metafiction, as found in Borges. There is something cowardly in the abandonment of representation: writers like Borges are afraid to confront the immense complexity of reality, hiding instead behind "metafiction". No writer who cowers away from this can be considered (((universal))), by my reckoning.

This doesn't mean what you think it means. Read my other posts for clarification.

Fernando Pessoa?

Stop liking what i dont like: the user.

I didn't really understand what to feel from Borges before moving to Argentina. Essentially, a lot of his stories move from the sort of speculations that you get from intellectuals during a long post-dinner talk (a common pastime in the country), and just work/make stories out of those little oddball concepts

In addition to being amazingly mind bending and revelatory, they're also just great to imagine coming up with and talking about in conversation with the man himself

>writers like Borges are afraid to confront the immense complexity of reality
>the immense complexity of reality

nice spook, spook-o.

youre a not so nice collection of prejudgements, patronizing morality and deep envy of the conservative. you are obviously a filthy commie.

Jorge Luis Borges’ 1967-8 Norton Lectures On Poetry (And Everything Else Literary)

openculture.com/2012/05/jorge_luis_borges_1967-8_norton_lectures_on_poetry_and_everything_else_literary.html

>tfw his weirly intoned and fragmented cadence

I love his voice.

I dont know what I am politcically, never read a page of Marx in my life.

And i'm really not sure what point you're trying to make with the greentext. I made no claim about the nature of reality, except to say that, as a totality, it forms a pretty complex system. This is utterly non-controversial and I dont think even Stirner would disagree.

What I'm saying is straight out if the ethics of a Stirner or a Nietszche, figure who you clearly admire ("spook-o", bizarre non-sequitor accusing me of socialism), yet poorly understand.

>afraid to confront the immense complexity of reality
Intentional or not, this post is a masterful work of irony

1 part autism
1 part ideas guy
1 part Lovecraft (fight me)

He's great

Everyone on this website starts out shitposting and ends up sincere. It's pointless to distinguish.

Agree 100%

Jesus Christ, saying these postmodern labyrinthine stories, and Calvino isn't a "metafictional and experimental" writer, he has books that are.

It's like you only sort of skimmed whatever books Veeky Forums recommended you by these authors and just sort of quit. And if you can't see why Borges is using all his eruditions (on the stories he does), you're probably dumber than you think. His prose is very lighthearted, despite all the quotations and mentions to shit that either aren't or might as well not be real, since most people will never read it.

Chekhov might be, but that you think Hemmingway and Melville are "universal writers", specially his short story stuff, only shows how fucking little your universe is.

>Art has a purpose
please, explain me WHAT purpose is that

Reading all your posts, it looks like you're some aristotelian dolt who thinks everything that ever stepped the earth has it's own little boxes and that people who try to go to boxes which aren't their own are EBUL

For me he is one of those writers that I think are genius but I can't enjoy.

>precious time

look at this fucking faggot

>It's a "Veeky Forums rails against relativism and people who say well if i enjoy it it must be good right?, and then gets absolutely triggered out the bazoo when that accusation gets turned around and applied to them" episode

Never read Aristotle outisde the poetics desu. My belief system is scrapped from a few hour long lectures I watched and misinterpreted on Derrida. I'm under no illusions about it's naivete and juvenile nature, and assume that it will change over time. The only thing I can guesa you think is Aristotlean is the thing about Romantic Expression and Classical imitation. Aristotle over-privileges Imitation in the poetics. My idea is stolen from Nietzsche and slightly modified.

Im not going to enforce a purpose on all art (I'm nit Lenin), but I am going to claim that a family reswmblance exists between all legitimate purposes that can be ascribed. Namely, that they agree to participate in the world, rather than turning away from it. Even music, the most abstract and unworldly art, exists in its representation by the hearing subject. Otherwise, it would be nothing more than the vibration of parts. And the ascribement to a piece of music of narrative (not even in terms of lyrics, when just in terms of the procession of emotions created by the piece, which is itself a narrative), marks its penetration into the world, and its ascension from its state of abstaction.

I would criticize Aristotle in a very similar way to you. He tries to fix tragedy in the box of classical imitation, without accounting for what else it contains (I also dont mean to reduce art to these two features; there are always innumerable elements at play).

No, art doesn't have any obligation with the world, and I legit fail to see how you went from anything that Derrida ever said and arrived at this.

You're actually trying to create a personal canon or whatever but you're so fucking spooked you can't even flat out complain about abstract art or experimental music and you create this extremely verbose explanation to try to circumvent the fact that even the most engaged and conscious art that has ever been produced still has no bearing in the world.

>It's like you only sort of skimmed whatever books Veeky Forums recommended you by these authors and just sort of quit

Got me. I did exactly this. Yet, these are their most famous works, no? I'm vaguely aware that Calvino wrote some realist novel in his youth, but it didnt sound particularly interesting. If you can recommend me some works by Borges which clash with my points about the nature of his fiction, I'd be much obliged.

And I do understanding that assigning him the lable of "clever and erudite" as a negative is subjective (I acknowledge this in my post, I think). But I find the tone of his work, as well as Eliot, hard to stomach, in ways that do not apply to similarly "clever and erudite" novelists, like Joyce.

>you're probably dumber than you think

I'm exactly as dumb as I think. I don't hold my opinions more highly than others, but neither am I interested in the faux tolerance of most kiterary discourse (which is something I think all we who visit here have in common). I do not like Borges; I have reasons for my dislike; I expect his fans to be able to defend him, either with evidence from his writing or by attacking the belief system (beyond calling me an "aristotlean dolt") which forms the basis of my criticisms, which would be fairly easy to do.

Thank you, that was all I was looking for.

My reference to Derrida refers to the linguistic monism implied by his critique of the signifyer-signified relationship, extrapolated into a metaphysics (of a sort. Really theres no meta; its just a physics)

>art doesn't have any obligation with the world
Obligation is the wrong word. More like art is implicated in the world and attempts to extricate it are futile. The kind of Platonic gymnastics you would need to perform in order to disagree with this would be spectactular, but by all means try.

>You're actually trying to create personal canon
So just like everyone else then. Everyone does this.

>you're so fucking spooked
Explain which spooks or, as high school graduates call them, social constructs, I am beholden to in my argument. Then form an actual critique of these constructs to convince me of their "spookiness".

As for your last point, you still need to provide evidence that artistic works are these magical detached entities that "have no bearing on the world".

>verbose

If you want simple explanations, I recommend reddit's Explain Like I'm 5 subreddit, where neckbeards mangle complex systems of thought (like Nietzsche or Kant) into terms even a 5 year old could understand. That you lack reading comprehension, or found my writing "difficult" is not a critique of my arguments.

really makes u think

No way. Even if I disagree with him, discussions like this is what we need more of on Veeky Forums

No, he's a retard with no capability to summarize his thoughts

Funny thing he's shitting on borges, it makes sense, borges mocked people who had to say in 100 words stuff you can say in 10

Obviously you're not a retard. And as such you'll be capable of summarizing my thoughts without losing any of the original ideas. Well, go ahead.

Otherwise fuck off back to twitter

>you're so fucking spooked
>Explain which spooks or, as high school graduates call them, social constructs, I am beholden to in my argument. Then form an actual critique of these constructs to convince me of their "spookiness".
Explain which spooks i'm subjected to, using an actual argumment

>As for your last point, you still need to provide evidence that artistic works are these magical detached entities that "have no bearing on the world".
I'm still waiting for you to explain why art has no bearing in the world
Here you have two minor examples, i have no interest in reading your shitty, pretentious wall of text that talks a lot but says little, and neither do most people here, go to reddit if you want someone to massage your ego.

You realise that using the fewest possible words doesn't equate to total clarity right. Your corrections are not even close to being improvements.

Why in god's name are you on a literature board if you can't get into your head that certain things are written the way they are for a reason, which you should be able to discern from reading it.

Your time is not precious. If it was you would read instead of posting here.

I love the fact that in these threads there's always a guy writing a shit-ton of critic towards Borges but has only read a few of his short stories a long time ago.

Because you are not saying anything worthwhile, most of your text is unnecesarily long just because you like using complex words for no reason whatsoever, and this being a message board, long texts are pretty good way of making sure people get bored and stop reading, because an anonymous post has no positive reference, people will automatically ignore it unless it either grabs their attention or is short enough to read it in passing, and you are not saying something that NEEDS 400 words, you just like long sentences

So, not only are your walls of text bad because you have a stupid idea, but from a pragmatic sense you are ensuring no one bothers with your texts, not even me have read most of what you have posted, because why would i waste that much time on you?

I know. It's great isn't it?

I'm the user that's been posting all the big walls of text about Borges, and I've literally only read half of his most famous book, and that was about a year ago

Have a hypocritical* "fuck off" from me

*I haven't read all y'all's WoT and don't plan to

>long texts are a pretty good way of making people get bored and stop reading
60 replies and counting. This thread would have died at ten posts if this argument hadn't kept it alive. But yes, writing well thought out, careful, detailed posts instead of little tweetfuls of buzzwords and bullshit is a good way of getting anons to stop comprehending what you're reading and make false assumptions about your points.

Yes, I like long sentences. Yes, I like to make use of as much of the English language as I can to make my points clearly and leaving the only opportunity for misinterpretation to the average user's lack of reading comprehension.

None of this should be a problem on a literature board. This isn't /b/. People here read door stoppers; the ADHD of the average person really shouldn't apply.

Borges is cool but he's not the endgame of anything.

Sorry for the cool story bro moment.

Many years ago, before I knew of 4 chan and had read Borges, I spent half a year reading history books about the XVI and XVII centuries, books and documents written in that age, and music composed in that age, for research and also pleasure.

Once I got through that and begun to read news about what was happening in my country, I felt almost as a foreigner, because in my mind I had been living for months in another age.

Years later I read Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote, and felt reflected in that, as in, You can immerse yourself so much into a subject to the point of escaping reality, your reality does not necessarily have to be the economic and political struggles of your country in the present.

Writers are not obliged to be social activists, or to try to speak to the heart of the reader in the most conventional ways.
That is not necessary to connect with what a writer is reading.
Perhaps you cant relate to what he writes about.

BTW his short stories about Argentine criminals and gauchos are definitely related to the hard time "civilized" whites have when trying to fit in in Latin American societies.

this is pasta btw

>short stories about Argentine criminals and gauchos
What short stories are those? That actually sounds really interesting and very different from the Borges that I've read

It's original, but it sure is pasta material

>What short stories are those?
About half of them? El Sur for instance. They're generally considered his worst because they're 100% about Argentina and not at all about trippy philosophy.

I'm the user that's been shitting all over Borges throughout this thread. I actually only have a mild dislike of the guy, but you know the way this website is. It convinces you to exaggerate all your opinions to a fever pitch. And on top of that I just love arguments.

Truth is (and I said this before in a previous powt) I've literally read about eight stories by Borges and those are his most famous ones. I had no idea he wrote anything other than those kind of metafictional experiments and finding out that half of his stories are nothing like that is pretty great. Would any of them happen to be in "ficciones"? Its just thats the only book by him that I currently own.

Ficciones is one of those considered his most quintessential, ie. containing more thought experiments, puzzles, literary fantasies and being overall more abstract than some of his later collections, but it still has a couple of gaucho-knife stories. Looking through the ToC there's El fin and El Sur.
I don't remember 'La forma de la espada' and 'tema del traidor y del heroe' very well but I think they were more standard short stories and set around the Irish revolts, not about Argentina.

Nice, nice. I'll check those out.

>...flimsy little fables
Nabokov, referring to Borge's short stories in a letter to a friend

Dude he writes fucking fables and fantasy.

He isn't 2deep4u post-post-Post.

Fucking Christ you almost gave me a headache.

>erudite writer

He felt ashamed of himself because he never got any substantial education.

I would criticize Borges too, but someone already did it pretentiously and got pounced on by 20 posters, thus derailing the thread into many too long posts justifying or arguing against the guy's dislike of Borges.

How delightfully Borgesian of a thread and a post, actually.

You guys are pathetic.

For the poster saying he is not political: go read "El Idioma de los argentinos" by him. Try giving a bit more thought on the stories he writes that are set in Argentina or South America. Give a fucking shot to his poetry.

He's deeply political, especially regarding his identity as a South American. What meant to be Argentinian, how to make sense of his heritage and his life as a man in Buenos Aires in his day and age.

I know you European and American shitposters have a hard time trying to actually understand anything that isn't written for you point of view of the world and try desperatly to transform something that is not *european* in its form or point of view into a work that is more palatable to you, but Borges dialogues with Latin American sensibilities first and foremost.

Could be a good start if you fuckers knew what a Gaucho was.

Boring, shallow, bereft of artful prose garbage. Thoroughly pseudo-philosophical drivell.

>you European and American shitposters have a hard time trying to actually understand
we actually just don't care, his gaucho stories are boring, South America is boring, Pynchon's Argentina subplot in GR is boring, eat more greeks why don't you

Speak for yourself. Borges is in the top ten of the 20th century. His prose if godlike.

no, I'll speak for you: you don't like Borges' gaucho stories, you don't like Borges' gaucho stories, you don't like Borges' gaucho sto--ooo-ries, (now everybody!), we don't like Borges' gaucho stories, ...

>ARGENTINA IS WHIIIITE!

Wonderful, in my opinion; very insightful as well, if occasionally losing himself in his own complexity. Not really much of a problem, honestly, and sometimes quite enjoyable to see just how much fun he has with trying to twist your perspective.

>Veeky Forums unironically dislike Borges
really makes you think...