As Borges lay dying his mind filled with images of lakes, of vast forests of spruce and pine, an enormous sky. He knew this was Finland, a country he had never visited, but which in these last years had been closer to his heart even than the streets of Buenos Aires in which he had grown up and about which he had written so much and so well.The story is an excerpt from Heart's Wings a selection of stories to be published by Carcanet next year. In addition to stories from Mobius the Stripper (1974) and In the Fertile Land (1987), the volume will include previously uncollected stories such as the one above.
PS: ReadySteadyBook also has his essay Borges and the Plain Sense of Things.
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Thank you for this Steve. A Christmas present for your readers?
ReplyDeleteThanks for pointing out the Josipovici story, Stephen.
ReplyDeleteReading it in the light of Zadie Smith's Guardian article, and your post on that, makes for a nice juxtaposition.
If Zadie Smith's dichotomy between perfectly formed - messily real will conceal a lot of the 'both.. and'ness, as it were, of writing, then do "Borges"'/Josipovici's thoughts on life v. fiction do the same thing as Smith's?
Wherever that leads, the Josipovici story is a beautifully uncluttered piece, I'd say, and certainly a joy to read. I wouldn't have it any other way.
Just a warning for those who haven't read their Ficciones yet, I would suggest waiting with this piece.
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