Jorge Luis Borges: Conversations (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781578060764)

Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986), one of the indisputably great writers of the twentieth century, was born in Buenos Aires. Never having been awarded the Nobel Prize, which his readers worldwide believed he deserved, this story writer, poet, essayist, and man of letters died at age eighty-six.

This anthology of interviews with him features more than a dozen conversations that cover all phases of his life and work.

Conducted between 1964 and 1984, the interviews reveal Borges to be a remarkably candid, humorous man, by turns skeptical and enthusiastic, and always a singularly incisive and adventurous thinker.

He discusses his blindness, his family and childhood, early travels, literary friends, and struggles to find his literary identity. In depth he examines the meanings and intentions of his own famous stories and poems, and he speaks of the writers whose works he has loved--Dante, Cervantes, Emerson, Dickinson, H. G. Wells, Kafka, Stevenson, Kipling, Whitman, Frost, and Faulkner--and of those whom he disliked, such as Hemingway and Lorca. Borges expresses his contempt for P駻on and assesses the tumultuous politics of Argentina. He speaks also of the imagination as a type of dreaming, about issues of collaboration and translation, about philosophy, and about time.

Many of the interviews were conducted by notable figures, including Alastair Reid, Willis Barnstone, and Ronald Christ.

As Borges speaks in these conversations, readers who have fallen under the spell of his magical prose and poetry will find additional sustenance.

Author: Richard Burgin
ISBN-10: 1578060761
ISBN-13: 9781578060764
Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
Language: English
Published: 11/01/1998
Pages: 256
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.96lbs
Size: 8.97h x 5.87w x 0.77d

Review Citation(s):
Booklist 11/01/1998 pg. 464