OverDrive would like to use cookies to store information on your computer to improve your user experience at our Website. One of the cookies we use is critical for certain aspects of the site to operate and has already been set. You may delete and block all cookies from this site, but this could affect certain features or services of the site. To find out more about the cookies we use and how to delete them, click here to see our Privacy Policy.
“Believe me: the benefits of blindness have been greatly exaggerated. If I could see, I would never leave the house, I’d stay indoors reading the many books that surround me.” —Jorge Luis Borges Days before his death, Borges gave an intimate interview to his friend, the Argentine journalist Gloria Lopez Lecube. That interview is translated for the first time here, giving English-language readers a new insight into his life, loves, and thoughts about his work and country at the end of his life.
Accompanying that interview are a selection of the fascinating interviews he gave throughout his career. Highlights include his celebrated conversations with Richard Burgin during Borges's time as a lecturer at Harvard University, in which he gives rich new insights into his own works and the literature of others, as well as discussing his now oft-overlooked political views. The pieces combine to give a new and revealing window on one of the most celebrated cultural figures of the past century.
“Believe me: the benefits of blindness have been greatly exaggerated. If I could see, I would never leave the house, I’d stay indoors reading the many books that surround me.” —Jorge Luis Borges Days before his death, Borges gave an intimate interview to his friend, the Argentine journalist Gloria Lopez Lecube. That interview is translated for the first time here, giving English-language readers a new insight into his life, loves, and thoughts about his work and country at the end of his life.
Accompanying that interview are a selection of the fascinating interviews he gave throughout his career. Highlights include his celebrated conversations with Richard Burgin during Borges's time as a lecturer at Harvard University, in which he gives rich new insights into his own works and the literature of others, as well as discussing his now oft-overlooked political views. The pieces combine to give a new and revealing window on one of the most celebrated cultural figures of the past century.
Due to publisher restrictions the library cannot purchase additional copies of this title, and we apologize if there is a long waiting list. Be sure to check for other copies, because there may be other editions available.
Due to publisher restrictions the library cannot purchase additional copies of this title, and we apologize if there is a long waiting list. Be sure to check for other copies, because there may be other editions available.
About the Author-
Jorge Luis Borges (b. 1899, Buenos Aires, Argentina; d. 1986, Geneva, Switzerland) was an Argentine short-story writer, poet, essayist and translator. He was one of the greatest literary figures of the twentieth century, inspiring generations of writers in the US and UK as well as his native Latin America. He is most famous for the short-story collections Ficciones (1944) and The Aleph (1949).
Reviews-
November 1, 2004 The first volume in Planeta's new line of bilingual (English-Spanish) books presents Borges's autobiographical notes, which were originally published in the New Yorker on September 19, 1970. In them the acclaimed Argentinean poet and cuentista shares wonderfully ruminative reflections on his life and on the historical events that shaped his writing. Born to a kind but philosophically anarchistic lawyer and a genteel woman of Argentinean and Uruguayan stock, the frail Borges was gently, but firmly, pushed towards a literary career at an early age. He bluntly notes, "It was tacitly understood that I had to fulfill the literary destiny that circumstances had denied my father"--the "circumstances" being blindness, a handicap that would later afflict Borges himself. Seamlessly weaving his bookish influences into his narrative, the wordsmith's childhood memories often read more like an annotated bibliography than an autobiography. It seems oddly impersonal at times, though the author's humble outlook on life remains above reproach. Borges first began writing at the age of six and published his first poem at 19, but he is quick to criticize his own work and speaks candidly about his failed experiments. For example, he dismisses his second volume of poetry Luna de enfrente (Moon Across the Way) as a "riot of sham local color" filled with "tomfooleries" like spelling his first name "Jorje" and omitting the "d" in words like ciuda. He also shares humorous anecdotes at his own expense, recounting, for example, how he surreptitiously slipped volumes of his poetry into the coat pockets of magazine editors. Succinct and measured, Borges's writings breeze over any non-literary adventures (there is no mention of his marriage to half-Japanese wife Maria Kodoma), but the picture that he presents is nonetheless mesmerizing.
Carlos Fuentes
"Without Borges the modern Latin American novel simply would not exist."
Title Information+
Publisher
Melville House
OverDrive Read
Release date:
EPUB eBook
Release date:
Digital Rights Information+
Copyright Protection (DRM) required by the Publisher may be applied to this title to limit or prohibit printing or copying. File sharing or redistribution is prohibited. Your rights to access this material expire at the end of the lending period. Please see Important Notice about Copyrighted Materials for terms applicable to this content.
Please update to the latest version of the OverDrive app to stream videos.
Device Compatibility Notice
The OverDrive app is required for this format on your current device.
Bahrain, Egypt, Hong Kong, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the Sudan, the Syrian Arab Republic, Tunisia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen
You've reached your library's checkout limit for digital titles.
To make room for more checkouts, you may be able to return titles from your Checkouts page.
Excessive Checkout Limit Reached.
There have been too many titles checked out and returned by your account within a short period of time.
Try again in several days. If you are still not able to check out titles after 7 days, please contact Support.
You have already checked out this title. To access it, return to your Checkouts page.
This title is not available for your card type. If you think this is an error contact support.
There are no copies of this issue left to borrow. Please try to borrow this title again when a new issue is released.
| Sign In
You will be prompted to sign into your library account on the next page.
If this is your first time selecting “Send to NOOK,” you will then be taken to a Barnes & Noble page to sign into (or create) your NOOK account. You should only have to sign into your NOOK account once to link it to your library account. After this one-time step, periodicals will be automatically sent to your NOOK account when you select "Send to NOOK."
The first time you select “Send to NOOK,” you will be taken to a Barnes & Noble page to sign into (or create) your NOOK account. You should only have to sign into your NOOK account once to link it to your library account. After this one-time step, periodicals will be automatically sent to your NOOK account when you select "Send to NOOK."
You can read periodicals on any NOOK tablet or in the free NOOK reading app for iOS, Android or Windows 8.
