Paperback, 256 pages
English language
Published July 6, 2007 by New Directions.
The groundbreaking trans-genre work of Argentinean writer Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) has been insinuating itself into the structure, stance, and very breath of world literature for well over half a century. Writing that is multi-layered, self-referential, elusive, and allusive is now frequently labeled Borgesian. Umberto Eco's international bestseller, The Name of the Rose, is, on one level, an elaborate improvisation on Borges' ficciön "The Library of Babel," which American readers first encountered in the original 1962 New Directions publication of Labyrinths.
This revised edition of Labyrinths, a representative selection of Borges' writing edited by Donald A. Yates and James E. Irby (in translations by themselves and others, with new corrections), includes the text of the original edition (as augmented in 1964) as well as Irby's original biographical and critical introduction (with a new Postscript) and a chronology of the author's life. Borges enthusiast William Gibson has contributed a new preface …
The groundbreaking trans-genre work of Argentinean writer Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) has been insinuating itself into the structure, stance, and very breath of world literature for well over half a century. Writing that is multi-layered, self-referential, elusive, and allusive is now frequently labeled Borgesian. Umberto Eco's international bestseller, The Name of the Rose, is, on one level, an elaborate improvisation on Borges' ficciön "The Library of Babel," which American readers first encountered in the original 1962 New Directions publication of Labyrinths.
This revised edition of Labyrinths, a representative selection of Borges' writing edited by Donald A. Yates and James E. Irby (in translations by themselves and others, with new corrections), includes the text of the original edition (as augmented in 1964) as well as Irby's original biographical and critical introduction (with a new Postscript) and a chronology of the author's life. Borges enthusiast William Gibson has contributed a new preface bringing Borges' influence and importance into the twenty-first century. --back cover
4.5 - I probably would have been better off reading ficciones. Some of the back half essays were well written but not mind melting like the short stories.
Picked up chiefly to read the short story 'Library of Babel'. It is an interesting thought experiment on futility of sorting through a very large data set.
While some of the stories were built around fascinating ideas, they had basically no plot or characters. Which was fine for some of them. Tlon, Uqbar, and Orbus Tertius is pretty good. The Don Quixote one, too. But too many of the rest also had uninteresting ideas, so I stopped. Maybe I'm just not smart enough. Oops!
