Volume 16, Number 1 · January 28, 1971
Don Borges
By V.S. Pritchett
The Aleph and Other Stories, 1933-1969
by Jorge Luis Borges, translated and edited by Norman Thomas di Giovanni
Dutton, 286 pp., $7.95
The success of Borges is happy and astonishing. I do not think it is hard to explain. He is a gift to the professors; he plays with ancient coin. More seriously, he has turned his back on the self-dramatizations and wordy hypochondria of the Zeitgeist. He is not swollen with contemporary 'problems.' His fictions are not polluted by the smog of high-minded journalism. Instead he remains in his corner, a prompter changing the cues, and daring us to reflect upon our lives. In a period that swamps the 'great writer' and 'great novel,' he opts for the more exacting minor role without falling into the minor writer's trap: the perfectly faceted thing.
Review, 2191 words
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