The one and only Borges

Jorge Luis Borges

Labyrinths: Selected Stories and Other Writings (Jorge Luis Borges) While Argentine literature is extremely interesting, with many different and important writers, Jorge Luis Borges is without a doubt the most prominent. You simply cannot mention Argentine literature without Borges and in many ways he both embodies and defines it. He truly has a unique style and captures many important aspects of Argentine culture and history in his works.Reading this book has been fascinating for a number of reasons. Not only is JLB just an absolutely genius human being and incredible writer, but I am also currently taking a class called “Borges and Argentine Literature”. Thus, I have already read a few of the stories in this book, but, since my class is in Spanish, I read them in Spanish. Furthermore, in my class we’ve read a few pieces by peopled who have translated Borges’ work, in which they talk about their experiences. In short, I have had MANY different things to think about and ways of going about analyzing this nice little piece of work. This book is not a novel (Borges didn’t write novels), instead it’s a collection of different stories and texts by Borges on a topic that fascinated him: Labyrinths. For Borges, there are physical/spacial labyrinths, like in his story “The House of Asterion,” which depicts the labyrinth on a Crete at the center of which awaited the mythical Minotaur, but there are also mental/temporal labyrinths, which he believes can be constructed through literature. For example, he uses the example of One Thousand and One Nights (a book that Borges adored) in his many different ways of speaking about labyrinths.While this book in particular focuses solely on labyrinths, I actually think it takes away from Borges’ work. The beauty of Borges is the universality with which he writes, all the while relating it back to Argentina. While Borges loves writing about labyrinths, he would never write a book about labyrinths. His three most acclaimed books, El Hacedor, Ficciones, and El Aleph are all collections of different stories and texts with a very wide range of topics, but they all come together to create something new and profound.  I love reading Borges because I believe that through him I can achieve a better understanding of Buenos Aires and of Argentina.