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The Perpetual Race Of Achilles & The Tortoise (2010)

by Jorge Luis Borges(Favorite Author)

3.95 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

0141192941 (ISBN13: 9780141192949)

languge

English

genre

Nonfiction

publisher

Penguin Classics

review 1: I've been getting into the anthology-of-essays sub-genre of late. Borges writes them beautifully, although Alberto Manguel remains my favourite. My recent reading suggests that Borges is more whimsical and less cynical than George Orwell, but more definite (I don't want to say dogmatic) and less inclined to synthesis than Alberto Manguel. I must comment, though, that aside from the contents of the book this is a beautiful edition. The embossed cover has a wonderful harmony about it.As to the essays, they are concerned with books, writers, and films, apart from the final piece. This is probably the one I appreciated most. In it Borges muses upon his blindness, thus it is the most personal of the essays, as well as the most profound. I also greatly enjoyed 'On Oscar Wilde', ... morewhich sums up Wilde's work very elegantly in this way: 'Perfection has injured him; his work is so harmonious that it can seem inevitable and even banal. It takes an effort to imagine the universe without Wilde's epigrams; that difficulty does not make them any less plausible.' 'The Enigma of Shakespeare' is also memorable, as I particularly liked his point as to why Shakespeare the man eludes our knowledge. Just as today the actors in a successful film are fêted and the screenwriter barely noticed, so in Elizabethan England the stage actors would have totally overshadowed the playwright. I was less gripped by the essays on hell, 'The Thousand and One Nights', and several films. Although they are beautifully constructed, the subject matter of each was simply further from my interests. I think that to me Borges remains firstly a writer of fiction, as his short stories are so extraordinarily brilliant. Conversely, Alberto Manguel is in my mind predominantly a non-fiction writer, as his fiction grips me less than his wonderful essays. Orwell, to my mind, manages to be both; I can't choose the better book between '1984' and 'Homage to Catalonia'. I've enjoyed essays by all three of them, however. When I was younger I didn't like to read short fiction and essays, as I found it easier to immerse myself in longer work. Now I've come to greater appreciation of what skill it takes for a writer to convince, entertain, or otherwise touch the reader in a mere few thousand words.
review 2: Much of this simply went over my head. An unfair reason to give a low score perhaps, but since I'm the first person to review it I'm all you've got :-)Here's a breakdown of my experience:Essay number 1: I gain nothing, except a slightly furrowed brow, and finish a little confused but not yet disheartened.2: I start out with interest, but quickly lose it in some darkened corner.3: I begin to feel disheartened. I don't finish.4: I brighten somewhat - translation! But again I don't finish.5: I'm diverted enjoyably enough.6: Who and what now?7: I decide never to read any Joyce.8: Two pages of interest.9: Three more of less.10: One interesting thought.11: Citizen Kane. Never seen it.12: Argentinians. I'm not one.13: I decide to read more Wilde.14: I think that China was and probably still is an interesting place.15: I skip.16: I decide to read Kubla Khan. I wonder why none of my dreams ever result in works of immortal genius.17: I indulge in a little paranoid theorising.18: I decide that this essay makes this book worth its weight in pocket shrapnel, and then some. I'm inspired and rather humbled.Finally: I decide that I probably will read Labyrinths as I've been intending, but maybe not for a while. less

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