With Borges
Reviewed: August 20, 2004
By: Alberto Manguel
Publisher: Thomas Allan Publishers
106 pages, $19.95
Jorge Luis Borges is unquestionably one of the great South
American writers. Since he has been widely translated he is
perhaps one of the best known of them, honoured both in the
mainstream and within genre fiction, particularly science
fiction, even though his work was not specifically in that
genre.
What is perhaps less widely know about this literary giant is
that he was blind by the 1960s, and had to rely on others to
read to him and transcribe the work he was creating in his
head.
As a boy in Buenos Aires, Alberto Manguel was one of Borges'
readers. Manguel was working part time in a bookstore and it
was there that Borges met him and asked him to become a
reader. From 1964 to 1968 the young man enjoyed a relationship
which undoubtedly influenced his later career as an
anthologist, historian of reading and an author in his own
write.
This small memoir is probably as much about the author as it
is about his subject, ranging back and forth through their
acquaintance, examining Manguel's reactions to his friend and
also setting them in the context of what he learned about him
later on.
We begin and end with an evening's visit for a reading, and
between those literary bookends, discover that Borges, though
blind, had an active mental life, knew where to find every
object and book in his apartment, enjoyed going to the
theatre, and could lip-sync entire gangster movies as well as
musicals.
At sixteen, Manguel had no idea how privileged he was to be
assisting Argentina's greatest writer. The memoir reflects
this, as the fifty year old looks back on his younger self
with a bit of indulgence. Clearly he wishes he had been paying
better attention, or taking notes - or something.
"But these are not memories," he writes near the end of the
book, "they are memories of memories and the events that
sparked them have vanished away, leaving only a few images,
and even those I can't be certain were as I remember them."
Yet memory remains a powerful tool for identifying the self,
and Manguel is certainly aware of this, having quoted his old
friend's "The Craft of Verse" in the opening pages of this
book.
"My memory carries me back to a certain evening ...
in Buenos Aires. I see him; I see the gaslight;
I could place
my hand on the shelves. I know exactly
where to find ...
Burton's Arabian Nights and Prescott's
Conquest of Peru,
though the library exists no longer."
With Borges is a charming little book, tidily put
together, with eight black and white photographs of its
subject in his most representative haunts. At 4.5 by 7.5 cm it
is a small book, and really is scarcely more than an essay
bound in hardcovers. I have to hope that it will see a
paperback edition, for I think most will view this as a stiff
cover price for a book this size, regardless of its
virtues.
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