I’ve always been a bit of a fan of short stories ever since I read Clive Barker’s “Books of Blood” in my teens. It’s an underrated form of fictional literature in my humble opinion. If it was good enough for Hemmingway…
I was looking through a few lists of great short story collections and one which regularly came up was this “Labyrinths” by Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges. I’ll be honest, I’d never heard of him, and now in retrospect I’m a little embarressed as everything I’ve read about him shows how well regarded and influential he’d been. Indeed one version of this collection has a foreword by the great William Gibson.
This is a little more than a collection of short stories though as it includes some essays and writings which we’ll come to, and was published in various levels of inclusion several times, with this version dated to 1962.
It sounded intriguing, and I decided to give it a read, though technically I gave it a listen, since I had an Audible pick available.
Before I get into the book review though, with regards to the audiobook, in hindsight, I wouldn’t recommend it. The narrator is fine, a little too matter of fact for me at times for some of the materials and he does occassionally slip into an odd accent. More importantly though, some of these stories are very dense for want of a better word, and more than a few times I found myself ‘rewinding’ to listen to a section again; with a book of course I could just re-read the paragraph, so if I was to do it again, I’d pick up a printed copy.
So on to the book and the stories.
Borges is indeed a great writer. He takes a great deal of pleasure writing in mutiple layers, stories inside of stories inside of a characters point of view. Some of the stories are short - very short - only a few minutes or pages in some cases, all the way up more normal length short stories.
Many of the stories are set historically or inside stories from older periods, some framed as fantastical versions of known tales such as the ‘Library of Babel’, or the ‘Garden of Forking Paths’. I like his writing style, it’s frank and straight but also florid and fanciful; hard to describe. Perhaps being an Argentinian writing mainly in the first half of the twentieth century, allows him to bring something not often present from some native English writers? For example, that heritage and trips through Europe results in stories from around Spanish culture and of the muslim influences in some stories, and middle eastern influences in others.
It’s difficult to pick a particular story out, but ‘The Immortal’ was memorable, as was the aforementioned ‘Library of Babel’.
As an interesting addition to the short stories are the essays, which weave comparisons of science and art together, or are open letters to other figures of note and some even on Borges’ own Argentinian heritage. As a fan of Kafka, I like the ‘Kafka and his Precursors’ essay. Perhaps some people would not like these kinds of essays be included, but as someone not familiar with Borges before reading this collection, it added a fair amount of context, which I found to be quite helpful.
In Conclusion
I’d recommend this collection; for me it was suitably different, and if you like the short story form, then these are some excellent and fascinating examples. However, as I mentioned before I’d probably go for the printed version. It would definitely encourage me to read more of Borges’ work, or to look into those writers who inspired him, and who in turn he has influenced.
So there you are, if like me you hadn’t head of BJorge Luis Borges, give him a try.