Borges, Jorge Luis; Eliot Weinberger (ed.,tr.); Esther Allen (tr.); Suzanne Jill Levine (tr.);
Selected Non-fictions
Penguin, 2000, 576 pages
ISBN 0140290117, 9780140290110
topics: | fiction | latin-america | argentina | single-author
Presents a Borges almost entirely unknown in English - his unlimited
curiosity and almost superhuman erudition become, in his essays, reviews,
lectures, and political and cultural notes, a vortex for seemingly the entire
universe: Dante and Ellery Queen; Shakespeare and the Kabbalah; the history
of angels and the history of the tango; the Buddha, Bette Davis, and the
Dionne Quints.
One reads these many essays, none of them more than a few pages long, with
amazement at their author's impetuous curiosity and penetrating
intelligence. One also experiences them as difficult pleasures. They are
elusive. They are so learned that the learning sometimes inundates meaning.
- Richard Bernstein, The New York Times
Despite a few significant omissions ("Borges and I" and "Partial Magic in the
Quixote" are curiously absent), Selected Non-Fictions represents a remarkable
achievement, offering the general reader and Borges aficionados alike a
rapturous glimpse into one of literature's most fertile and original
minds. (...) Reading his nonfiction casts new light on the man, his fiction
and his contribution to 20th century literature. Most of all, there is the
sheer pleasure of the writing, the glorious sentences and ideas and
epiphanies that are his own" - Andrew Roe, San Francisco Chronicle
CONTENTS
A Note on This Edition xi
Early Writings 1922--1928 1 (40)
The Nothingness of Personality 3 (7)
After Images 10 (2)
Joyce's Ulysses 12 (4)
A History of Angels 16 (4)
Verbiage for Poems 20 (3)
A Profession of Literary Faith 23 (5)
Literary Pleasure 28 (4)
An Investigation of the Word 32 (9)
1929--1936 41 (112)
The Perpetual Race of Achilles and the 43 (5)
Tortoise
The Duration of Hell 48 (4)
The Superstitious Ethics of the Reader 52 (4)
Our Inabilities 56 (3)
The Postulation of Reality 59 (6)
A Defense of Basilides the False 65 (4)
The Homeric Versions 69 (6)
Narrative Art and Magic 75 (8)
A Defense of the Kabbalah 83 (4)
The Art of Verbal Abuse 87 (5)
The Translators of The Thousand and One 92 (18)
Nights
I, a Jew 110 (2)
The Labyrinths of the Detective Story and 112 (3)
Chesterton
The Doctrine of Cycles 115 (8)
A History of Eternity 123 (17)
Film Reviews and Criticism 140 (13)
The Cinematograph, The Biograph 140 (3)
Films 143 (2)
Street Scene 145 (1)
King Kong 146 (1)
The Informer 147 (1)
Two Films (Crime and Punishment; The 148 (1)
Thirty-nine Steps)
The Petrified Forest 149 (1)
Wells, the Visionary 150 (3)
Writings For EL Hogar (Home) Magazine 153 (44)
1936--1939
Ramon Llull's Thinking Machine 155 (5)
When Fiction Lives in Fiction 160 (3)
Capsule Biographies 163 (12)
Isaac Babel 163 (1)
Ernest Bramah 164 (1)
Benedetto Croce 165 (1)
Theodore Dreiser 166 (1)
T.S. Eliot 167 (1)
Will James 168 (1)
Liam O'Flaherty 169 (1)
Oswald Spengler 170 (1)
Paul Valery 171 (1)
S. S. Van Dine 172 (1)
Virginia Woolf 173 (2)
Book Reviews and Notes 175 (22)
Der Engel vom Westlichen Fenster 175 (1)
Gustav Meyrink
Private Opinion 175 (1)
Alan Pryce-Jones
The Pursuer 176 (1)
Louis Golding
Lord Halifax's Ghost Book 177 (1)
Absalom! Absalom! 178 (1)
William Faulkner
Gubben Kommer 179 (1)
Gustaf Janson
Stories, Essays and Poems 180 (1)
Aldous Huxley
Collected Poems and Plays 180 (1)
Rabindranath Tagore
The Door Between 181 (1)
Ellery Queen
Personality Survives Death 182 (1)
Sir William Barrett
Wolfram Eberhard, tr., Chinese Fairy 182 (1)
Tales and Folk Tales
The Literary Life: Marinetti 183 (1)
Excellent Intentions 184 (1)
Richard Hull
The Confessions of a Thug 185 (1)
Meadows Taylor
The Unvanquished 186 (1)
William Faulkner
The Tale of Genji 186 (1)
Lady Murasaki
Patches of Sunlight 187 (2)
Lord Dunsany
Two Fantasy Novels 189 (1)
The Literary Life: Oliver Gogarty 190 (1)
An English Version of the Oldest Songs in 190 (1)
the World
Of Course, Vitelli! 191 (1)
Alan Griffiths
A Grandiose Manifesto from Breton 191 (2)
H. G. wells' Latest Novel 193 (1)
Delphos, or the Future of International 194 (1)
Language
E. S. Pankhurst
Joyce's Latest Novel 195 (1)
The Literary Life: The Dionne Quints 196 (1)
1937--1945 197 (68)
Notes on Germany & the War 199 (15)
A Pedagogy of hatred 199 (1)
A Disturbing Exposition 200 (2)
An Essay on Neutrality 202 (1)
Definition of a Germanophile 203 (3)
1941 206 (1)
Two Books 207 (3)
A Comment on August 23, 1944 210 (2)
A Note on the Peace 212 (2)
The Total Library 214 (3)
Time and J. W. Dunne 217 (3)
A Fragment on Joyce 220 (2)
The Creation and P.H. Gosse 222 (3)
Circular Time 225 (4)
John Wilkins' Analytical Language 229 (4)
On Literary Description 233 (3)
On William Beckford's Vathek 236 (4)
Coleridge's Flower 240 (3)
Prologues 243 (6)
The Invention of Morel 243 (2)
Adolfo Bioy Casares
Bartleby the Scrivener 245 (2)
Herman Melville
The Abasement of the Northmores 247 (2)
Henry James
Book Reviews 249 (8)
Mathematics and the Imagination 249 (1)
Edward Kasner
James Newman
Rudyard Kipling: A Study in Literature 250 (2)
and Political Ideas
Edward Shanks
Monkey 252 (2)
Arthur Waley
Leslie Weatherhead, After Death 254 (3)
Film Reviews and Criticism 257 (8)
Two Films (Sabotage; Los muchachos de 257 (1)
antes)
An Overwhelming Film (Citizen Kane) 258 (1)
Transformed 259 (2)
Dr. Jekyll
Mr. Hyde
Two Films (Now Voyager; Nightmare) 261 (1)
On Dubbing 262 (3)
Nine Dantesque Essays 1945--1951 265 (42)
Prologue 267 (5)
The Noble Castle of the Fourth Canto 272 (5)
The False Problem of Ugolino 277 (3)
The Last Voyage of Ulysses 280 (4)
The Pitying Torturer 284 (3)
Dante and the Anglo-Saxon Visionaries 287 (5)
Purgatorio I, 13 292 (2)
The Simurgh and the Eagle 294 (4)
The Meeting in a Dream 298 (4)
Beatrice's Last Smile 302 (5)
1946--1955 307 (128)
Our Poor Individualism 309 (2)
The Paradox of Apollinaire 311 (3)
On Oscar Wilde 314 (3)
A New Refutation of Time 317 (16)
Biathanatos 333 (4)
From Allegories to Novels 337 (4)
From Someone to Nobody 341 (3)
The Wall and the Books 344 (3)
Personality and the Buddha 347 (4)
Pascal's Sphere 351 (3)
The Innocence of Layamon 354 (4)
On the Cult of Books 358 (5)
Kafka and His Precursors 363 (3)
The Enigma of Edward FitzGerald 366 (3)
Coleridge's Dream 369 (4)
Forms of a Legend 373 (4)
The Scandinavian Destiny 377 (5)
The Dialogues of Ascetic and King 382 (4)
A Defense of Bouvard and Pecuchet 386 (4)
Flaubert and His Exemplary Destiny 390 (4)
A History of the Tango 394 (11)
A History of the Echoes of a Name 405 (4)
L'Illusion Comique 409 (2)
Prologues 411 (9)
The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other 411 (2)
Sketches
Bret Harte
On Heroes, Hero-worship and the Heroic in 413 (5)
History, and Ralph Waldo Emerson,
Representative Men
Thomas Carlyle
The Martian Chronicles 418 (2)
Ray Bradbury
Lectures 420 (15)
The Argentine Writer and Tradition 420 (7)
German Literature in the Age of Bach 427 (8)
Dictations 1956--1986 435 (88)
Prologues 437 (21)
The Kappa 437 (1)
Ryunosuke Akutagawa
Pages of History and Autobiography 438 (6)
Edward Gibbon
Catalog of the Exhibition Books from Spain 444 (1)
Leaves of Grass 445 (4)
Walt Whitman
Mystical Works 449 (9)
Emanuel Swedenborg
Lectures 458 (42)
The Concept of an Academy and the Celts 458 (5)
The Enigma of Shakespeare 463 (10)
Blindness 473 (10)
Immortality 483 (8)
The Detective Story 491 (9)
Prologues to The Library of Babel 500 (11)
The Library of Babel 500 (1)
The Vulture 501 (2)
Franz Kafka
The Concentric Deaths 503 (2)
Jack London
The Guest at the Last Banquets 505 (2)
Villiers de l'Isle-Adam
The Tiger Guest 507 (1)
P'u Sung-ling
Scientific Romances 508 (3)
Charles Howard Hinton
Prologues to A Personal Library 511 (12)
A Personal Library 511 (2)
Prologue to the collection 513 (1)
Stories 514 (1)
Julio Cortazar
The Apocryphal Gospels 515 (1)
The Time Machine; The Invisible Man 516 (1)
H. G. Wells
Demons 517 (1)
Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Theory of the Leisure Class 518 (1)
Thorstein Veblen
Fear and Trembling 518 (1)
Søren Kierkegaard
Virgil, The Aeneid 519 (2)
Varieties of Religious Experience; The 521 (2)
Study of Human Nature
William James
Notes 523 (25)
Index 548 (12)