Jorge Luis Borges: Conversations

richard burgin jorge luis borges

Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986), one of the indisputably great writers of the twentieth century, was born in Buenos Aires. Never having been awarded the Nobel Prize, which his readers worldwide believed he deserved, this story writer, poet, essayist, and man of letters died at age eighty-six.

This anthology of interviews with him features more than a dozen conversations that cover all phases of his life and work.

Conducted between 1964 and 1984, the interviews reveal Borges to be a remarkably candid, humorous man, by turns skeptical and enthusiastic, and always a singularly incisive and adventurous thinker.

He discusses his blindness, his family and childhood, early travels, literary friends, and struggles to find his literary identity. In depth he examines the meanings and intentions of his own famous stories and poems, and he speaks of the writers whose works he has loved―Dante, Cervantes, Emerson, Dickinson, H. G. Wells, Kafka, Stevenson, Kipling, Whitman, Frost, and Faulkner―and of those whom he disliked, such as Hemingway and Lorca. Borges expresses his contempt for Péron and assesses the tumultuous politics of Argentina. He speaks also of the imagination as a type of dreaming, about issues of collaboration and translation, about philosophy, and about time.

Many of the interviews were conducted by notable figures, including Alastair Reid, Willis Barnstone, and Ronald Christ.

As Borges speaks in these conversations, readers who have fallen under the spell of his magical prose and poetry will find additional sustenance.

Genres literaturebiography memoirnonfictionbiography

256 pages, Paperback

First published November 1,1998

This edition

Format: 256 pages, Paperback
Published: November 1, 1998 by University Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 9781578060764
ASIN: 1578060761
Language: English

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Jorge Luis Borges

Jorge Luis Borges

Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator regarded as a key figure in Spanish-language and international literature. His best-known works, Ficciones (transl. Fictions) and El Aleph (tran...

About the author

richard burgin

Richard Burgin's stories have won five Pushcart Prizes and been reprinted in numerous anthologies including The Ecco Anthology of Contemporary American Short Fiction, The Best American Mystery Stories, and New Jersey Noir (edited by Joyce Carol Oates). He is the author is 16 books including two novels, “Rivers Last Longer” and “Ghost Quartet,” eight collections of short fiction, as well as the interview books “Conversations with Jorge Louis Borges” and “Conversations with Isaac Bashevis Singer.” His book The Identity Club: New and Selected Stories was listed as one of The Best Books of 2006 by The Times Literary Supplement and as one of the 40 Best Books of Fiction of the last decade by The Huffington Post. Other books have been listed as Notable Books of the Year by The St. Louis Post Dispatch and three times by The Philadelphia Inquirer. In France a Richard Burgin reader, L'Ecume Des Flammes was published in 2011, which received a rave review in Le Monde. He is the founder and current editor of the literary magazine Boulevard.