what we have here is a failure to communicate

from Collected Fictions
by Jorge Luis Borges
translated by Andrew Hurley

Borges wrote in 1954, 20 years after the publication of his first collection, that the stories found within were ‘the irresponsible sport of a shy sort of man who could not bring himself to write short stories, and so amused himself by changing and distorting (sometimes without aesthetic justification) the stories of other men.’

I’m jumping the gun a bit on the extra-curricular reading of Borges’ short stories by our non-structured book group, the discussion of which will kick off tomorrow with Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote. I couldn’t wait to start my perusal of Collected Fictions though, and it seemed extremely fitting to explore Borges reworkings of the ‘stories of other men’ after reading Life a User’s Manual and witnessing Perec’s creative use of the same type of distortion.

In A Universal History of Iniquity, Borges wrote pieces inspired by the writings of Mark Twain, the history of pirates, The Gangs of New York, tales of Billy the Kid, Japanese folklore, and 1001 Nights. According to the translator Andrew Hurley, Borges clearly borrowed directly from his sorces at times, freely adapted them at others, and pretty much did whatever he wanted to at all times, changing dates and rearranging events to fit his purpose. The stories are kind of peculiar, being in general short biographies of clever and violent people, with fluctuating tone and style – mostly entertaining, but nothing too impressive.

That’s why in comparison the one completely original story in the collection – Man on Pink Corner – is so damn good! It’s apparent from the first sentences that this is a story that is fully alive, bristling with the music of the tango, a hubbub of voices, a sky that goes on forever. The writing style is quite different, far more descriptive and yet simpler too. It’s the story of a hot night in Buenos Aires, and an encounter between two skilled knife fighters, witnessed by an observer who may or may not have remained passively on the sidelines… If this is a good example of Borges work, I am hooked.

Bringing it back around to Perec (this could become a habit!) in the comments on Richard’s post about Life a User’s Manual, he mentioned coming across a version of this Borges story in Perec’s work. Since I hadn’t read anything by Borges at the time I passed through Chapter 73, I didn’t pick up on this, but it was fun in the best geeky sense to go back and see what mischief Perec had gotten up to.

There in the story of Lino Margey, the brilliant motor-pacing bicycle champion who disfigured his face in a terrible crash, and took himself off to Buenos Aires, where due to his incredible memory and a fairly lengthy prison stay, he accidentally became the New World’s mobsters’ who’s who…there the informed reader will find the character of Rosendo Juarez, one of Borges’ knife fighters, called “The Sticker” by him and “The Thumper” by Perec – both equally good with the shiv. Like Borges before him, Perec just grabs what he needs and runs with it, in this case not really retelling the story but allowing his characters and Borges’ characters to exist in the same world. I rather like this technique – the merging of two literary landscapes.

I’m going to quote Richard, if I may, since his comment coupled with something Borges said kind of completes my thoughts here:

“On the “plagiarism” front, the main thing I wanted to say is that I loved how Perec rewrote the 30 writers mentioned in the postscript into his novel via the embedded quotations. Made their stories “his” in the same way that we readers make all stories “ours” through the act of reading.” – Richard

‘I sometimes think that good readers are poets as singular, and as awesome, as great authors themselves.’ – Jorge Luis Borges

It’s one of my ambitions in life to be a ‘good reader’ and with this vote of confidence from Borges and the likes of him and Perec to keep me on my toes, I’m well on my way I believe. 🙂