/lit/ - Literature

>>21953613
Novels are not elegant in his view. There's too much filler and digressions. Borges didn't like that. He didn't have the personality and approach to literature to write a novel.

>>21953613
it would have been like Pale Fire or something, and I assume he realized that Pale Fire is gay

>>21953628
Ol' Billy Faulkner was often sarcastic or over-the-top for the sake of it. I don't really think I can write a novel like he can, although I have poems out.

>>21953629
Nabokov ripped off Borges with impunity in Ada.

>>21953633
Imagine being as genuinely retarded as you are

>>21953652
Still a published poet, no less! Guess that points towards the state of poetry nowadays, anon.

>>21953652
NTA but the Faulkner quote is self-deprecating humor. Of course there may be a kernel of truth, but it isn’t that simple.

>>21953613
His (prose) reputation is based on an incredibly short period of pure inspiration. The History of Iniquity wouldn't be remembered if it hadn't been for the later stories, then you can see the pure genius of the first half (originally its own pamphlet, Forking Paths) of Fictions becoming patchy in its second part (Artifices). The Aleph stories manfully keep the same ball rolling, though there's fundamentally nothing new and the best story (Immortal) is a compendium of his themes and techniques, then the stories that come later exist between self-parody and dredging of the dregs. Borges the genius was a frighteningly brief event.

>>21953613
>not constrained by time

“Time is the substance I am made of. Time is a river which sweeps me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger which destroys me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire which consumes me, but I am the fire. The world, unfortunately, is real; I, unfortunately, am Borges.”

>>21953725
Filtered by Book of Sand. His microfictions were arguably better than some of his longer short stories.

>>21953725
>then the stories that come later exist between self-parody and dredging of the dregs.
Brodie's Report has some good stories that don't fit in either category, not as genius as Ficciones but not as bad as you say.

>>21953725
>Borges the genius was a frighteningly brief event.
He was at heart a Journalist in the league of also rans like Orwell (a better essayist) and Hemingway (travelogues), and his poetry is better than the middle and late short fiction.

>>21953725
Correct, but those brief moments are not actually brief: he may have 60 or 70 pages of genuinely great literature, which is an extraordinary amount for any writer.
Very few other writers have that.
Faulkner, Nabokov, Pynchon, Hemingway... None of them has that.
Just try to to think of 5-15 pages by them that are *as* memorable as the Library of Babel, the Garden of Forking Paths, Pierre Menard Author of D. Quixote, Funes the Memorious, the Aleph, and that contain so much, with so many possible interpretations, etc. There are many very memorable ones, which I myself will never forget, but nothing as striking in such a short space.
Other than that, he was a very good essayist, short-story writer, and poet. His best poems are certainly better than anything Hemingway or Faulkner ever wrote.

>>21953613
>Why couldn't he muster the powers to master, let alone write, a novel?
Borges, like many other writers who are essentially poets, did not very much love the novel as a literary form.
I, who am also a poet, agree with him.
The reason? La marquise sortit à cinq heures, etc. etc. etc. There is much in novels that is merely trivial. No man can write 500, 600 good pages, unless he dedicates his whole life to it and possesses a genius like those of Homer and Dante.
I myself have rejected the novels I wrote. They were good, and better than almost anything that's likely to win the Man Booker or the Nobel 'prizes' anytime soon, but little in them was essential.
I now limit my prose to aphorisms and very short essays. Perhaps I will try my hand at a short story some day, but with a limit of 15 pages, or less.