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Welcome goonlings to the Awful Book of the Month! In this thread, we choose one work of Resources: Project Gutenberg - http://www.gutenberg.org - A database of over 17000 books available online. If you can suggest books from here, that'd be the best. SparkNotes - http://www.sparknotes.com/ - A very helpful Cliffnotes-esque site, but much better, in my opinion. If you happen to come in late and need to catch-up, you can get great character/chapter/plot summaries here.  For recommendations on future material, suggestions on how to improve the club, or just a general rant, feel free to PM me. Past Books of the Month [for BOTM before 2014, refer to archives] 2014: January: Ursula K. LeGuin - The Left Hand of Darkness February: Mikhail Bulgalov - Master & Margarita March: Richard P. Feynman -- Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! April: James Joyce -- Dubliners May: Gabriel Garcia Marquez -- 100 Years of Solitude June: Howard Zinn -- A People's History of the United States July: Mary Renault -- The Last of the Wine August: Barbara Tuchtman -- The Guns of August September: Jane Austen -- Pride and Prejudice October: Roger Zelazny -- A Night in the Lonesome October November: John Gardner -- Grendel December: Christopher Moore -- The Stupidest Angel 2015: January: Italo Calvino -- Invisible Cities February: Karl Ove Knausgaard -- My Struggle: Book 1. March: Knut Hamsun -- Hunger April: Liu Cixin -- 三体 ( The Three-Body Problem) May: John Steinbeck -- Cannery Row June: Truman Capote -- In Cold Blood (Hiatus) August: Ta-Nehisi Coates -- Between the World and Me September: Wilkie Collins -- The Moonstone October:Seth Dickinson -- The Traitor Baru Cormorant November:Svetlana Alexievich -- Voices from Chernobyl December: Michael Chabon -- Gentlemen of the Road 2016: January: Three Men in a Boat (To say nothing of the Dog!) by Jerome K. Jerome February:The March Up Country (The Anabasis) of Xenophon March: The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco April: Plain Tales from the Hills by Rudyard Kipling May: Temple of the Golden Pavilion by Yukio Mishima June:The Vegetarian by Han Kang July:Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees August: Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov September:Siddhartha by Herman Hesse October:Right Ho, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse November:Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain December: It Can't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis 2017: January: Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut February: The Plague by Albert Camus March: The Dispossessed by Ursula K. LeGuin April: The Conference of the Birds (مقامات الطیور) by Farid ud-Din Attar May: I, Claudius by Robert Graves June: Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky Current: Ficcionies by Jorge Luis Borges  Book available here, in english translation: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00XUYQUZ2/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1 Many of the individual short stories are also available online if you search.
About the book: quote:Ficciones is the most popular collection of short stories by Argentine writer and poet Jorge Luis Borges, often considered the best introduction to his work. Ficciones should not be confused with Labyrinths, although they have much in common. Labyrinths is a separate translation of Borges's material into English, by James E. Irby, that, like the translation into English of Ficciones, appeared in 1962. Together, these two translations led to much of Borges's worldwide fame in the 1960s. Several stories appear in both volumes. "The Approach to Al-Mu'tasim" appeared originally in History of Eternity (1936). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ficciones quote:Reading Jorge Luis Borges is an experience akin to having the top of one's head removed for repairs. First comes the unfamiliar breeze tickling your cerebral cortex; then disorientation, even mild discomfort; and finally, the sense that the world has been irrevocably altered--and in this case, rendered infinitely more complex. First published in 1945, his Ficciones compressed several centuries' worth of philosophy and poetry into 17 tiny, unclassifiable pieces of prose. He offered up diabolical tigers, imaginary encyclopedias, ontological detective stories, and scholarly commentaries on nonexistent books, and in the process exploded all previous notions of genre. Would any of David Foster Wallace's famous footnotes be possible without Borges? Or, for that matter, the syntactical games of Perec, the metafictional pastiche of Calvino? For good or for ill, the blind Argentinian paved the way for a generation's worth of postmodern monkey business--and fiction will never be simply "fiction" again. About the Author quote:Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo KBE (/ˈbɔːrhɛs/;[1] Spanish: [ˈxorxe ˈlwis ˈborxes] About this sound audio (help·info); 24 August 1899 – 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish-language literature. His best-known books, Ficciones (Fictions) and El Aleph (The Aleph), published in the 1940s, are compilations of short stories interconnected by common themes, including dreams, labyrinths, libraries, mirrors, fictional writers, philosophy, and religion.[2] Pacing This is a collection of short stories, so skip around. If you read a story you like, post about it. If you want to say you've read Borges without risking reading a whole book, start with "The Library of Babel" and/or "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote". Please bookmark the thread to encourage discussion. References and Further Reading http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20140902-the-20th-centurys-best-writer http://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2010/07/23/128716508/the-universe-and-the-infinite-library https://libraryofbabel.info/ Final Note: Thanks, and I hope everyone enjoys the book! Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 04:50 on Jul 6, 2017 |
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Jul 3, 2017 16:14
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good
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Jul 3, 2017 18:24
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This is my favorite book and this topic reminded me that I loaned my copy to a friend half a year ago and I haven't seen it since.
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Jul 3, 2017 20:09
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Super pumped for this, I'll start my reread as soon I as I get back home today. Which translation is everyone using? I'm thinking about grabbing a 2nd different translation from the library and reading some of the stories alongside each other.
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Jul 3, 2017 20:47
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Oh this will be good, I've read a handful of these before, here and there.
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Jul 3, 2017 23:26
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I'm just very happy about my use of the "fiction" tag for this one
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Jul 4, 2017 03:23
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hell yes, borges is insanely good
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Jul 4, 2017 08:04
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Ahhh, "Ficciones", lo mejor de lo mejor. I'll read it in English just to see the differences after reading it many times in Spanish.
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Jul 4, 2017 17:10
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Another BB Goon and real life pal convinced me to pick this up about a year ago and much to my shame I've not even touched it since. I'll remedy that asap.
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Jul 5, 2017 09:01
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This book rules.
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Jul 5, 2017 15:03
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Jorge Luis Borges posted:Writing long books is a laborious and impoverishing act of foolishness: expanding in five hundred pages an idea that could be perfectly explained in a few minutes. A better procedure is to pretend that those books already exist and to offer a summary, a commentary. 
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Jul 6, 2017 00:21
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Addition made to the "References and further reading" section. It is now complete.
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Jul 6, 2017 04:52
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I like the one about the guy who tries to rewrite a book word for word by experiencing exactly what the author experienced while writing.
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Jul 6, 2017 06:02
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snoremac posted:I like the one about the guy who tries to rewrite a book word for word by experiencing exactly what the author experienced while writing. if you like pierre menard you might also like "gigamesh" by slanisław lem e: gigamesh is relevant to each of the three posts prior to this one in different ways, hooray Tree Goat fucked around with this message at 06:17 on Jul 6, 2017 |
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Jul 6, 2017 06:14
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snoremac posted:I like the one about the guy who tries to rewrite a book word for word by experiencing exactly what the author experienced while writing. The point isn't that he's trying to experience exactly what the author experienced, the point is that he is trying to justify an arrangement of words in Spanish identical to Don Quixote, but written by a 20th century French intellectual, not a 16th century Spanish soldier. He couldn't possibly experience what Miguel de Cervantes did, so he cou;dn't possibly write the same Don Quixote, even if they are word-for-word identical. There's a bit in the story where he says something like "composing Don Quixote in the 17th century was perhaps inevitable, composing it in the 20th century, almost impossible", you're invited to think about whether these ideas truly persist across time, like people who love old literature always say they do, or whether some parts of old books are just kind of lost at this point, no longer relatable or even experienceable. anyway this is the best book ever written, my favourite I have ever read and I've probably got more enjoyment out of reading and thinking about Fictions than I have any other single piece of media in my life. Everyone read it, say things, and I'll tell you why you are wrong in your opinions.
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Jul 6, 2017 12:01
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I always read "Pierre Menard" as a satire of lit-crit, or at least of the style of lit-crit that imposes modern critical frameworks (marxism, etc.) onto works that predate that framework. The story's narrator is certainly trying to defend the "new" Quixote, but it's an inherently ludicrous defense. I haven't actually started my re-read yet though, just going by memory. Borges sometimes tells you more about what you're bringing to him, though.
Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 14:02 on Jul 6, 2017 |
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Jul 6, 2017 13:36
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Oh cool, I still have my copy of this from when it was book of the month in 2010  Definitely worth a reread. https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3353277
Crashbee fucked around with this message at 14:21 on Jul 6, 2017 |
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Jul 6, 2017 14:15
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Hahahaha, dammit, I only checked back to 2011
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Jul 6, 2017 14:43
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:I always read "Pierre Menard" as a satire of lit-crit, or at least of the style of lit-crit that imposes modern critical frameworks (marxism, etc.) onto works that predate that framework. The story's narrator is certainly trying to defend the "new" Quixote, but it's an inherently ludicrous defense. I haven't actually started my re-read yet though, just going by memory. Borges sometimes tells you more about what you're bringing to him, though. I've tried looking thru it with this in mind, and while there's a few things in the text that could point towards that, I think it's a) a really boring reading and b) doesn't make a lot of sense given the sort of things Borges was interested in. His essays and stories so often focus on strange ways of interpreting texts that are not necessarily in keeping with common sense, and the idea that for this one time he decided to satirise the entire thing seems weird to me. There's elements of it, Borges often pokes fun at himself for being as interested in reading as he is, but the idea that that is why this story is written is no good at all. Also I really don't get your point about imposing modern critical frameworks on things that predate it? Like we shouldn't take a postcolonial look at Heart of Darkness because it was written before Orientalism? The entire point of theoretical frameworks is that they can be applied to things that came before them, otherwise you're just making poo poo up.
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Jul 6, 2017 23:31
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CestMoi posted:
Oh I'm not married to that reading at all. I think it says more about the mindset I was in the first time I read "Pierre Menard" than it does about anything else. That opposition to the application of modern frameworks to works from prior eras was an odd pet peeve some of my professors had back in my undergrad years. I agree with you that it's not a valid objection from a critical perspective, but it can still be a funny avenue for satire. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 23:49 on Jul 6, 2017 |
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Jul 6, 2017 23:39
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*in dumb professor voice* you can't use new historicism when reading old books because its a modern framework
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Jul 7, 2017 11:58
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CestMoi posted:The point isn't that he's trying to experience exactly what the author experienced, the point is that he is trying to justify an arrangement of words in Spanish identical to Don Quixote, but written by a 20th century French intellectual, not a 16th century Spanish soldier. He couldn't possibly experience what Miguel de Cervantes did, so he cou;dn't possibly write the same Don Quixote, even if they are word-for-word identical. There's a bit in the story where he says something like "composing Don Quixote in the 17th century was perhaps inevitable, composing it in the 20th century, almost impossible", you're invited to think about whether these ideas truly persist across time, like people who love old literature always say they do, or whether some parts of old books are just kind of lost at this point, no longer relatable or even experienceable. Ah okay. It's been years since I read it. I really obsessed over his short stories at the time so I'm surprised I barely remember them now.
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Jul 7, 2017 13:51
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It's fairly easy to read Menard as a parody or reducio ad absurdum against The Death of The Author and t he lit-crit school that came out of that work. Except for the pesky fact that Borges is writing more than a decade before that essay saw the light of day...
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Jul 8, 2017 22:17
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Hey there goon friends. I'm Peruvian and I have read and re-read Borges many times, treat yourselves with this beauty of a book. Edit: Actually I have never ever read Borges in English, might give it a try. turboraton fucked around with this message at 16:50 on Jul 10, 2017 |
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Jul 10, 2017 16:48
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It's already been said but I'll never get tired of saying that this is one of the best books ever written. "Funes The Memorious" is my favorite Borges and it floors me every time. The laconic narration, the way in which Funes acquires this totalizing perspective and the burden it places on him, and down to the very last sentence, how this mundane vessel became a flash-in-the-pan, a focal point for something much greater before vanishing abruptly--completely floored me the first time I read it, and still does. "He was the solitary and lucid spectator of a multiform and almost intolerably precise world." The central theme that I get from Borges is that his stories are essentially playful commentaries on the limits of our perception. Some are more epistemological, some are more ontological, some are more metafictional, but that's what kind of unites them for me. I think that because of the subject matter Borges' sense of humor often gets overlooked in discussion. He's so drat funny too.
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Jul 11, 2017 04:13
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The counterpoint to the more serious take on "Menard" is that Borges loves him some low-key trolling. It's one of the most brilliant stories ever, particularly thanks to the structure. Borges loves his fake essays and invented criticism and academic characters ("The Garden of Forking Paths" might be the one of the more studious mysteries ever written). There's a more subtle metatextual thing going on in "Menard" than in "Tlön" as Borges is less explicit about the fictional nature of Menard himself: It's a 20th Century Argentinian writer imagining a 20th Century French writer attempting to recapture Cervantes. If it's impossible for Menard to make the same work even with an identical text, what does that say of Borges creating Menard through the authoritative structure of an academic paper? It's a theme he explores from multiple angles in this, in "Tlön" as well as "The Circular Ruins." The stories still have great impact, it's an amazing collection, but go back and check the publication dates on these stories and it's especially shocking. This stuff is from the 30s and 40s and feels 30 years ahead of the curve. Probably no exaggeration that Borges is a massive influence for modern writers (not just Spanish-language ones either, he looms large everywhere), which is impressive for a man who refused to write novels. But I guess you can say a short story is enough for any idea, if you are Borges. EDIT: Though maybe we have "The South" to blame for a particular strain of lovely twist endings. Then again we also have Calvino's "Around an Empty Grave" which is Borges-biting at its most blatant so it's not all bad. Nakar fucked around with this message at 19:16 on Jul 11, 2017 |
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Jul 11, 2017 19:12
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Nakar posted:EDIT: Though maybe we have "The South" to blame for a particular strain of lovely twist endings. Then again we also have Calvino's "Around an Empty Grave" which is Borges-biting at its most blatant so it's not all bad. An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge is 1890, though
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Jul 11, 2017 20:09
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So yeah, The South. I'm a literaturally uneducated savage so basically all I gleamed from that is that a]the protagonist idealizes death in romantic circumstances (yeah, comparison to the drag and drabness of modern life, glorious adventures in days past etc. etc. - sure, ahead of its time but nothing groundbreaking in my opinion) b]it might have all been a dream, which I assume is the lovely twist mentioned above. But Borges calls it his best story and it seems really simple compared to (most of) the rest of his stuff. Anyone willing to push me in the direction of what I'm missing?
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Jul 11, 2017 20:40
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anilEhilated posted:So yeah, The South. I'm a literaturally uneducated savage so basically all I gleamed from that is that a]the protagonist idealizes death in romantic circumstances (yeah, comparison to the drag and drabness of modern life, glorious adventures in days past etc. etc. - sure, ahead of its time but nothing groundbreaking in my opinion) b]it might have all been a dream, which I assume is the lovely twist mentioned above. But Borges calls it his best story and it seems really simple compared to (most of) the rest of his stuff. Anyone willing to push me in the direction of what I'm missing? Like, you have to have physically seen those parts of the country for the impact to be the same, I think.
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Jul 12, 2017 04:32
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The south is the country, the rural life away from the big city. We Non-City Latinos go to cities to study, to better ourselves, to work sophisticated jobs we don't have in our towns. But we yearn day and night for all we left behind...until the very moment when we decide to actually go back and the story in The South. We will never be city boys and we are no longer country boys as well.
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Jul 12, 2017 07:39
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How easy is this to read in the original Spanish, if you're moderately literate in the language?
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Jul 12, 2017 20:22
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Borges makes you go check the dictionary, how much depends on your literacy level. You end up being thankful as he is not pompous, he is just picking the right word.
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Jul 13, 2017 02:57
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I just finished The Circular Ruins and it's been my favorite story so far. I really enjoyed the description of the god of fire as an amalgamation of forms. There's a bit at the beginning which confuses me which says, "...where the Zend language has not been contaminated by Greek and where leprosy is infrequent." The first bit seems to be saying that the area hasn't had contact, or has hidden from contact from the West, but how does leprosy relate to that?
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Jul 13, 2017 03:56
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poisonpill posted:How easy is this to read in the original Spanish, if you're moderately literate in the language? granted, i was young (and stupid, which i remain to this day) at the time, but i had a way tougher time with his allusions than his vocabulary. i think you'll do fine Tree Goat fucked around with this message at 04:37 on Jul 13, 2017 |
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Jul 13, 2017 04:32
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Thanks, friends. These are great. Is it too early to suggest Dubliners as a contrast next month?
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Jul 13, 2017 08:16
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poisonpill posted:Thanks, friends. These are great. Is it too early to suggest Dubliners as a contrast next month? Not too early, but we did Dubliners in April 2014.
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Jul 13, 2017 13:18
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Finished, was awesome. Just as an aside, I'm also reading The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman, switching between a chapter or two of that and then some fiction, rinse and repeat. Lost track a little and got a fair bit into "The Garden of Forking Paths" believing it was a chapter of Tuchman. Was confused and enlightened. (This sort of thing never happened in the pre-Kindle era.)
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Jul 16, 2017 23:58
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I found this article after reading "Theme of the Traitor and The Hero" and thinking that Fergus Kilpatrick might be based on a real person. I thought it was a pretty interesting overview of places where Borges took liberty with actual reality.
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Jul 17, 2017 18:43
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It's nice that you can buy this book in ePub now, but this ePub has a whole bunch of errors in it. Incidentally, which translation do people prefer?
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Jul 18, 2017 15:28
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next month noms need
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Jul 22, 2017 16:30
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