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the complete review - auto/biographical

Borges

by
Adolfo Bioy Casares

[an overview of the reviews and critical reactions]

general information | review summaries | review and reception notes | links | about the author

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Why we haven't reviewed it yet:
The publishers declined to provide us with a copy, and we haven't come across one on our own


Chances that we will review it:
Very good -- if we can get our hands on a copy (though even then it will take a while to get through ...)

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  Review Consensus:

  More a book to dip into than read, cover to cover -- and where's the index ?

  From the Reviews:

• "This extraordinary volume sheds light on Borges’ omnivorous intellect while exposing his unbridled snobbery. He was a man of forceful, though inconsistent, opinions: Shakespeare is the most overrated writer, Joyce’s books are idiotic but keep literary critics employed, anyone who admires Baudelaire is an imbecile. Borges is especially astringent about his compatriots (.....) It is not through his highbrow witticisms but through his unguarded comments that we learn most about him. (...) The book is a remarkable glimpse into an equally remarkable literary friendship. It is, perhaps, as close as one can get to Borges the writer and, especially, to Borges the man." - Angel Gurria-Quintana, Financial Times
  
  
• "Borges está lleno de anécdotas y frases brillantes sobre los más diversos temas, de opiniones curiosas, de ocurrencias y de chismes, pero, ante todo, de literatura. La amistad entre Bioy y Borges fue desde el principio una prolongada conversación sobre autores y libros, y ésta es la que con justicia ocupa la mayor parte del diario. El índice de los escritores y obras discutidos abarcaría varias páginas -- y, por cierto, se echa de menos. Borges no es una hagiografía ni un panegírico, aunque sea, esencialmente, un homenaje (.....) Como los diarios y los cuadernos de notas, el Borges será más bien un libro para abrirse en cualquier parte y encontrarse con una anécdota o una sentencia memorable." - Pablo Sol Mora, Letras Libres
  
  
• "Fortunately, Borges’s great works rise way above the tetchiness of their author. But no great insights into them will be found in Adolfo Bioy Casares’s Borges. (...) Borges is a curious book because, despite so much talk, much that most ordinary mortals consider really important is left unsaid between the two friends. (...) This book will seem far too long to readers who are not Borges or Bioy scholars. But it is often entertaining. (...) (I)t is incredible that a book of this length has no index. It has at the end a list of people who appear in it, but no page references – a major shortcoming for a book that few will read from beginning to end but which many readers will want to consult." - David Gallagher, Times Literary Supplement

Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers. Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure.

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Notes about the Reviews
and the Book's Reception:

       Sight unseen it still sounded like the book-of-the-year to us when we first heard about it; while it's gotten some foreign notice it doesn't seem to have made quite the splash we expected. Most of the fuss seems to have been around Borges-widow María Kodama's griping about the book .....
       The critics have also noted the sheer size of this thing -- and yet it's not entirely comprehensive (it's only the Borges-parts of Bioy Casares' diary) and comes without an index.
       No word on any English-language edition yet.

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Links:

• Official site, including the invaluable index (warning ! dreaded pdf format !)
• Destino Ediciones publicity page

• Críticas
• Letras Libres (Spanish)

• Jorge Luis Borges at books and writers
• Jorge Luis Borges at The Guardian
• Jorge Luis Borges at The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction

• Adolfo Bioy Casares at cervantes.es
• Adolfo Bioy Casares at the Agencia Literaria Carmen Balcells

• By Jorge Luis Borges:
  • Collected Fictions
  • Ficciones
  • On Argentina
  • On Mysticism
  • On Writing
  • Selected Non-Fictions (also: The Total Library: Non-Fiction 1922-1986)
  • This Craft of Verse
  
  
• About Jorge Luis Borges:
  • With Borges on an Ordinary Evening in Buenos Aires, Willis Barnstone's memoir
  • Jorge Luis Borges: Conversations, edited by Richard Burgin
  • Seven Conversations with Jorge Luis Borges by Fernando Sorrentino
  • Borges in/and/on Film, Edgardo Cozarinsky
  • With Borges, Alberto Manguel
  • Borges: A Life, Edwin Williamson
  • Borges: A Life (also:The Man in the Mirror of the Book), James Woodall
  • Borges and the Literary Marketplace by Nora C. Benedict
  • The Unimaginable Mathematics of Borges' Library of Babel by William Goldbloom Bloch
  
  
• Featuring Jorge Luis Borges:
  • Luis Fernando Verissimo's novel, Borges and the Eternal Orangutans

• Where There's Love, There's Hate (with Silvina Ocampo)

• See Index of Biographical works under review
• See Index of Latin and South American literature

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About the Author:

       Argentinian author Adolfo Bioy Casares lived 1914-1999, and is best known for the works he wrote together with Jorge Luis Borges.

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