Customer Reviews (2)

Borges is Borges; this edition, a rip-off
I am reading this very Volume 1 of the 2007 Emece edition. For this reader, at least, to have all of Borges works gathered together is a boon. I haven't found anyone as consistently interesting since I read straight through all of Orwell's published works nearly thirty years ago. The four volumes in this set contain most of his published work (all? not sure of this) his brief and potent ficciones, his extraordinary but overlooked poetry, and his occasional pieces on literature and history, the finest examples of dilletantatism (not necessarily a bad word - most of us are dilletantes in most areas of interest).
However, I am compelled to give a mediocre rating to a collection of the fabulous Borges' works, for a very practical reason, to wit:
The book is falling apart in my hands as I read it. This volume, and the rest in the series, are "perfect-bound", meaning that the pages were completely cut, laid in order, then glued to the cover. And Emece has made a wretched mess of it, the worst I've ever seen in binding of this type. Perfect-bound books always fall apart, when the glue has had time to age, even if they're hardly used. But the four volumes in this uniform series of Borges fall apart immediately.
Alternatives are not so readily available. At roughly forty dollars per volume (I bought mine in a surviving bricks-and-mortar store in Chicago), perfect-bound is a rip-off. I have never seen the earlier hardcover set for sale in used bookstores, and earlier editions, hard- and soft-cover, are rather expensive on the Internet. There is less interest in Borges than there used to be (at one time he could rival Kafka and Hesse in the interest he awakened among people who didn't usually read demanding literature) and there seems to be less interest than formerly in Spanish-language literature generally; I don't quite understand that. Well, next time you go to Buenos Aires, look for it.
*By the way, the cover depicted here is an earlier edition, not the 2007 fiasco.

BORGES, OBRAS COMPLETAS, TOMO 1:
No hace falta que les repita lo bueno que es Borges, ¿no? Para tener una idea más detallada de los libros incluidos es mejor que busquen la información de cada uno por separado. Acá voy sólo a detallar qué libros se encuentran en este tomo:

BORGES, OBRAS COMPLETAS, TOMO 1:

POESIA
Fervor de Buenos Aires (1923)
Luna de enfrente (1925)
Cuaderno San Martín (1929)

ENSAYO
Evaristo Carriego (1930)
Discusión (1932) Historia de la eternidad (1936)

Relatos
Historia universal de la infamia (1935)
Ficciones (1944). (Incluye: El jardín de senderos que se bifurcan (1941) y Artificios (1944))
El Aleph (1949) ... Read more

Customer Reviews (8)

Dreamtigers by Jorge Louis Borges
"... he thought that the rose was to be found in its own eternity and not in his words; and that we may mention or allude to a thing, but not express it."

After enjoying a few of Borges' short stories, I wanted to read more of him. Dreamtigers was a compulsive buy last week when Andy and I went to Barnes and Noble just as it was about to close. I usually spend a significant amount of time researching and deliberating over a book before purchasing it, but this slim volume immediately caught my eye. Mortimer J. Adler called Dreamtigers "one of the literary masterpieces of the twentieth century," and it is said to be Borges' most personal work.

The book is composed of poetry and short prose sketches (other reviews have called them "parables"). Though these pieces are on a variety of topics, from toenails to Shakespeare, they are unified by threads of Borges' insight. Borges treats this book as a kind of sketchbook illustrating his own philosophical thoughts: time, human nature, and perceptions of self are recurring topics. He also uses this book as an opportunity to engage in dialogues with the masters--comparisons between Homer's blindness and his own failing sight are made, and he also devotes several pieces to Shakespeare and Don Quixote.

I really enjoyed this book, and I'm glad I read it. I'm excited to read more Borges, in particular his master work Ficciones. The prose pieces in Dreamtigers were phenomenal. The poems were interesting as well, but did not illicit the same breathless response. This is when I wish I could read Spanish fluently, as I suspect the poems are better in the original language. The translator kept rhyming schemes intact, and I suspect that this might at times weakened the verse.

At only 96 pages, this is not a long book. That does not mean, however, that it is a light read. What strikes me most about Borges is his ability to pack so much into a single sentence. Every sentence is needed, every sentence has a purpose. The book might be small but it is certainly dense and will have you asking questions long after you finish it.

Borges as Borges the 'maker'
This is supposedly the book that Borges thought his most intimate and personal. Each small story, sketch, parable, poem provides insight into the imagination of one of the great literary creators of all time. His ability to condense into a few lines or paragraphs - worlds of theme and question are unmatched except by his holy predecessor Kafka.
'El Hacedor' 'The Maker' the title - storyis of course who Homer and Shakespeare and Borges are and are not. In Borges perhaps most famous essay- story- reflection- poem 'Borges and I' he considers the relationship between the person he is , and the name he has become- and he playfully puts down the legend while understanding it is already confounded with the real passing Borges.
To read this work and his work is to come alive to new possibilies in Literature in Imagination and in Life.
A true creation is a great gift of life.
Borges gives us Borges and much much more besides.

Genius in Fragments and Sketches
Jorge Luis Borges will be remembered as one of the outstanding writers of the twentieth century. I am continually awed by his imagination, by his incredible breadth, and by his command of language.

At one point Borges considered this particular collection of miscellany - odd poems, stories, parables, sketches, fragments, and fictional quotations - to be a mirror of his life, and even possibly a work that would outlast his widely admired Ficciones and El Aleph. Dreamtigers is indeed fascinating, but it likely to be more fully appreciated by readers already familiar with Borges. A reader new to Jorge Luis Borges might begin with Ficciones, The Aleph, Labyrinths, or Seven Nights.

The prose was translated by Mildred Boyer and the poetry by Harold Morland. The arrangement is by Borges himself, and reflects an association of ideas, not a chronological grouping. Any reader acquainted with his works undoubtedly recognizes that Borges often returns to favorite themes in various guises, sometime deliberately, other times unintentionally.

This collection seems more personal and biographical than his better known works. The dedication is to an Argentine poet, long dead, that Borges once unreservedly criticized. The essay Dreamtigers is a personal reflection on the limits of creativity. The Draped Mirrors is a haunting recollection about a friend that suffereda uniquely personal (from Borges perspective) mental illness. Borges and I explores the confused identity ofBorges the writer and Borges the man. Other essays are less biographical, and reveal his deep fascination with the thoughts and ideas of other writers, especially Homer, Dante, Plato, Coleridge, and Cervantes.

Dreamtigers is evenly divided between prose and poetry. Borges began his literary career as a poet and only gradually moved to prose.Amazingly, his poetry is as remarkable as his prose. Manypoems reflect his vast knowledge and interests - the inevitable passage of time, the game of chess, mirrors, Anglo-Saxon grammar, and Ariosto and the Arabs. Others are more biographical, often touching on themes that were also subjects of essays. The poetic translation by Harold Morland is excellent.

GREAT INTRODUCTION TO BORGES'S SHORTER WORKS
I give this book 4 stars because I honestly don't feel that it's his best collection. That honor would go to his collection of short stories entitled, THE BOOK OF SAND. LABYRINTHS comes in a close second or third. But for the beginning Borges reader, this is an EXCELLENT place to start. The book is divided into two primary parts: Borges's parables and super-short stories; and his poems. There's nothing over three pages long in here, except the introduction. Naturally, I found lots of quotable lines and paragraphs in this work. The translation is very good, too. It definitely sounds like Borges, and the tranlators even manage to get some of his poems to rhyme while still getting across that Borgesian feeling. You'd almost think that all of this stuff was written in English to begin with. Assuming you haven't read Borges, he's very intellectual, knows lots about history and books, and loves to write on the subjects of tigers, yellow, blindness, Dante, Martin Fierro, and *the other Borges*. Hope you like this book.

excellent if you're in the proper frame of mind
dreamtigers has languished on my shelf for over a year... for some reason i just couldn't get into it. foolish me.

this little book broken into twoparts- a collection of short pieces some poetry. all very brief- thelongest passage occupies a little over two pages.

what i'm really struckby is how personal this collection is. i've seen borges as a toweringintellect but rather cold. dreamtigers has forced me to re-evaluate this-there's tenderness, loss and affection in these works.

borges is alwaysdazzling, and the second part is a good introduction to his poetry, ofwhich i understand there is a lot. the introductory and appendix notes aremost illuminating. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Dantesco
Incluye los siguientes ensayos (exclusivamente acerca de La Divina Comedia):

El noble cantillo del canto cuarto
El falso problema de Ugolino
El último viaje de Ulises
El verdugo piadoso
Dante y los visionarios anglosajones
Purgatorio, I, 13
El Simurgh y el águila
El encuentro en un sueño
La última sonrisa de Beatriz ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

TOO LITTLE TO TELL
In his tiny preface, Jorge Luis Borges describes Maria Luisa Bombal as a "wonderful Chilean writer", and in the introduction by the translators she is described as "the most important Latin American woman novelist of this century". This is not faint praise. The question is, how come nobody in America has ever heard of her and you can count her works in translation on two fingers? This slim volume is not enough for me to make any judgements of her worth or talent.

Bombal writes stories that border on fantasy or horror. In the first story, actually more a novella, "The Final Mist", she writes about two cousins who marry each other a few months after the man's first wife has died. He cannot forget his dead wife and she merely married him to keep from being a spinster. So she seeks her satisfaction in other places, meeting a strangely supernatural man in the streets one night. "The Tree" also concerns a marriage. In it, the wife, Brigada, comes to the realization that she no longer knows why she married her husband. "The Unknown" was to me the best story of the collection since it lacked all sentimentality. It was about a pirate ship that gets sucked down to the bottom of the ocean by a whirlpool. When the crew wakes up they find themselves in a desert whose sky is simply a reflection of the sand. "New Islands" shows the conflict between two men as they covet the same married woman even as strange volcanic islands form off the coast.

After reading this too brief collection, I want to read more by Bombal. There's just not enough here to get any feel for the writer. She does make you feel uneasy and when she gets the horror elements going it really works. Her relationships do verge into the sappy at times though. I also feel that this collection was manipulated in some way to try to portray Bombal as some feminist champion, as mentioned in the book jacket. I would like to find one of her novels, but I doubt I will find one in English. ... Read more

Product Description
De 1931 a 1970 Jorege Luis Borges colaboro activamente en la revista Sur. Muchos de los textos que publico alli fueron recogidos en sus Obras Completas (1971), pero otros -ensayos sobretemas literarios y politicos, resenas bibliograficas, notas de cine, etcetera- permanecieron ineditos en libro, fuera del alcance del publico. Este volumen reune casi cien colaboraciones dispersas; se cierra con el discurso de homenaje que Borges pronuncio en la Unesco, con motivo de la muerte de Victoria Ocampo, y que Sur publico en 1980. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Borges en Sur
Borges escribió un gran número de ensayos que, en el momento de hacer la selección para su publicación en libro, decidió dejar afuera. Uno de los motivos, sin duda, es que varios de estos ensayos repiten algunas ideas que se encuentran en algún otro lugar en su obra. Pero con Borges siempre hay sorpresas. Resulta obvio que no escribía de una manera cuando lo hacía para un libro, y de otra cuando escribía la lista de la lavandería (que no es el caso de este libro, no se preocupen). Su estilo es firme y parejo, y siempre atrapante.

En su caso, volver a repasar algunas ideas siempre implica ver las cosas desde un nuevo ángulo (por ejemplo, en este libro encontramos el ensayo sobre bibliotecas infinitas que precede a su cuento "La Biblioteca de Babel"; en otro texto encontramos las "reglas" del cuento policial, etc.). Para aquellos que ya hayan pasado por "Discusión", "Otras Inquisiciones", etc., y quieran curiosear un poco más, creo que este libro (así como los tomos de Textos Recobrados -- sobre todo el segundo) vale la pena.

Pero dejo la cosa acá, siguiendo el consejo: "los directores cinematográficos --y los novelistas-- suelen olvidar que las muchas justificaciones (y los muchos pormenores circunstanciales) son contraproducentes. La realidad no es vaga, pero sí nuestra percepción general de la realidad; de ahí el peligro de justificar demasiado los actos o de inventar muchos detalles". --Borges, El delator, Borges en Sur ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Best Borges Biography
This is the best Borges' biography I've read so far but, as usual, his biographers are not his best critics, and his life is better told by himself in a number of interviews and his own brief autobiography. Still, if you have to get one, get this one. The biographer died a few years earlier than the biographed, but the latest editions bring the chronology up to date. But yes, for a detailed "ending", you'll have to go somewhere else.

Still, Borge's life happened more inside libraries and the books he read and wrote, than in the so called "real" world. So, read his books first. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Primer libro de cuentos de Borges
El libro de Borges preferido por Onetti, "Historia..." es tan bueno y entretenido como cualquiera de sus libros. Probablemente no sea lo primero que hay que leer de Borges (para eso: Ficciones y El Aleph). El mismo lo consideraba una especie de cuaderno de ejercicios; pero ahí recide su fascinación.
El libro está compuesto de siete caricaturescas y tragicas historia de personajes reales aunque no muy conocidos, todos ligados al crimen de una manera u otra; seis piezas breves escritas por Borges como si fuese otro, o tomadas de libros imaginarios; y una historia clásica (Hombre de la esquina rosada. )

INDICE

Prólogo a la primera edición
Prólogo a la edición de 1954
El atroz redentor Lazarus Morell
El impostor inverosímil Tom Castro
La viuda Ching, pirata
El proveedor de iniquidades Monk Eastman
El asesino desinteresado Bill Harrigan
El incivil maestro de ceremonias Kotsuké no Suké
El tintorero enmascarado Hákim de Merv
Indice de las fuentes
Hombre de la esquina rosada
Etcétera
Un teólogo en la muerte
La cámara de las estatuas
Historia de los dos que soñaron
El brujo postergado
El espejo de tinta
Un doble de Mahoma ... Read more

Product Description
A collection of fantasy stories which includes stories by James Joyce, Lewis Carroll, Ursula Leguin, Ray Bradbury, Oscar Wilde J.G Ballard, Franz Kafka..... ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

first rate!
This collection is excellent.Along with the deservedly famous selections such as The Monkey's Paw and The Man Who Liked Dickens, there are many stories even the most erudite fantasy reader may be unacquainted with.Some of the tales, such as The Story of the Foxes by Niu Chiao and the unsettling Guilty Eyes by Ah'med Ech Chiruani, are half page at most, but will implant themselves in the memory as effectively as the longer narrations.("Guilty Eyes" is as durable as a poison oak seed.)Also present is a fine selection of Latin American fictions, with a focus on Argentine writers.Kafka' Josephine the Singer, Cocteau's The Look of Death, and Beerbohm's Enoch Soames sound straight out of the world of Borges, a tribute to the latter writer who managed to forge a world view at once deeply personal yet universal.Borges's own Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius is included as well as a piece by the under-read Casares.All in all an indispensable collection, marred only by an astonishing number of typos.Buy it!(At 92 cents it's a steal.)

fantastic collection
This book is more what a fantasy-reader friend of mine called "literary fantasy" dismissively, but I think it's a wonderful collection - all over the map in terms of stories, global in scope and style, and just great reading overall. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Borges first book of short stories
Borges first book of short stories is as good and entertaining as anything he wrote. It is probably not the first thing to read by him, though, simply because here he is still "testing" out his style. Do not misunderstand me. These stories have a style of its own, perfectly matching its kind and atmsphere. Only, it is not The Lybrary of Babel or The South...
The book is composed of seven caricaturesque and tragic stories of real but not very well known historical characters (all of them linked to some crime or other); six brief pieces written by Borges as if he were someone else, or taken from imaginary books; and one story (Man on a pink corner) that is considered his first "all by himself" short-story, a crime situated in the 1900's slums of Buenos Aires with a twisted end and unique in Borges' ouvre for his use of slang and street language. Fun to read. ... Read more