Borges Criticism – Biography
- At October 13, 2019
- By Great Quail
- In Borges
- 0
To think of him is to think of an intimate friend, one we have never seen but whose voice we know and every day miss.
—Jorge Luis Borges on Oscar Wilde, Atlas, 1984
Borges Criticism: Biography
This page profiles English-language biographies of Borges and memoirs about Borges. They are listed in chronological order of publication. Clicking the image of a book takes you directly to Amazon.com.
Jorge Luis Borges: A Literary Biography
Jorge Luis Borges: A Literary Biography
By Emir Rodríguez Monegal.
Paragon House, 1978.
Emir Rodríguez Monegal was a Uruguayan writer, editor, and critic, the founder of numerous Hispanic literary magazines, and a powerful advocate for Latin American writers in North America. Published in 1978, Jorge Luis Borges: A Literary Biography was the first major biography of Borges available in English, and remained “the” Borges biography for nearly twenty years.
Monegal’s biography has much to recommend it, and his position as a literary critic is evident in his insightful discussions of Borges’ writing. However, many have complained of factual inaccuracies—modern Borges scholars have cited over sixty errors—and Monegal’s style is often dry and pedantic. He is fond of projecting his own theories into his subject, a disagreeable approach that feels like amateur psychoanalysis. (Fellow Borges biographer James Woodall correctly called the book “humorless.”) Despite its flaws and idiosyncrasies, Jorge Luis Borges: A Literary Biography remains an indisputably important work, and all modern Borges scholarship is indebted to Monegal.
Hispanics of Achievement: Jorge Luis Borges
Hispanics of Achievement: Jorge Luis Borges
By Adrian Lennon.
Chelsea House, 1992.
Part of an educational series produced for U.S. school libraries—witness the patronizing title—Lennon’s slim biography is surprisingly charming, filled with photographs and amusing illustrations. As one might expect from a book intended for students, Lennon writes in a simple, direct style; sticking to the basic facts, avoiding critical judgments, and maintaining an upbeat and positive tone. Nevertheless, he makes good use of the format, and his cheerful enthusiasm lights up every page. (An author of mystery novels, Lennon also turns the occasional striking phrase; this book is actually a “good read.”) In short, Lennon’s Jorge Luis Borges makes a handsome introduction to Borges, for high school students, their parents, or curious chemistry teachers passing the library bookshelf.
With Borges on an Ordinary Evening in Buenos Aires: A Memoir
With Borges on an Ordinary Evening in Buenos Aires: A Memoir
By Willis Barnstone.
University of Illinois Press, 1993.
Borges’ longtime friend and translator Willis Barnstone created this memoir from his years working with Borges. Until the Garden gets its own review online, here are a pair of opposing viewpoints, with the latter closer to reflecting my own opinion.
From Publishers Weekly :
The author first met Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) at a New York City poetry reading in 1968; their friendship deepened through the following years in encounters held in Buenos Aires and Cambridge, Mass. In this intimate, invaluable portrait, Barnstone, a professor of comparative literature at Indiana University, presents the poet-storyteller as a figure of paradox and contradictions. Nearly blind in his last decades, Borges longed for his life to end; he was obsessed with the instant after death that, he hoped, would reveal the mysteries of the universe. We see Borges, in place of the popular image of the cerebral metaphysician, as an itinerant sage, a tender lover who married his muse María Kodama on his deathbed, a troubled sleeper whose nightmares were filled with mazes. Barnstone’s fluent translations of Borges’s verses enliven these reminiscences and conversations.
From Library Journal:
This whimsical account intersperses random recollections of desultory musings on such topics as death, suicide, and, especially, literature, with both pithy sayings (“We are always inventing the past’’) and snatches of poetry from Argentine master Jorge Luis Borges. As outtakes from Barnstone’s journal, transcribed during the 1970s and 1980s, about his worldwide travels and encounters with Borges, the reminiscences smack of déjà vu, recalling in particular his more illuminating Borges at Eighty, from which he has cloned an entire interview. The final product is a work that is too much Barnstone and not enough Borges. Not an essential purchase.
The Man in the Mirror of the Book
a.k.a. Borges: A Life
The Man in the Mirror of the Book/Borges: A Life
By James Woodall.
Basic/HarperCollins 1996.
The 1990s were a fascinating decade for Borges scholarship. Borges himself had only recently died, leaving his estate in the hands of his young widow, María Kodama. His 100th birthday was right around the corner, and the publishing word was preparing to honor the Borges Centennial with a rich slate of new translations. His musical collaboration with Astor Piazzolla, El tango, was re-recorded, and the explosive growth of the Internet resulted in numerous Borges web sites, including The Garden of Forking Paths. There was a Borges renaissance afoot; and while lacking the excitement of discovery that marked Borges’ emergence onto the international stage in 1961, it certainly cemented his posthumous reputation as one of the great twentieth century writers. Who needed a Nobel Prize when you had become a global phenomenon?
This renaissance called for an updated biography. First published in Britain as The Man in the Mirror of the Book, James Woodall’s study of Borges is an attempt to make a “considerable improvement” upon Monegal’s Borges: A Literary Biography. In his introduction, Woodall compares Monegal’s work to Herbert Gorman’s seminal biography of James Joyce, an early attempt to capture Joyce’s life. Important but deeply flawed, Gorman’s book was eventually replaced by Richard Ellmann’s masterpiece, James Joyce. Given Woodall’s comparison—and it’s a fair one—the reasonable question arises, does Woodall’s biography stack up to Ellmann’s?
As Woodall himself would probably agree, the answer is “no.” While Borges: A Life is a solid biography, it’s not aiming for the sheer completeness of Ellmann’s James Joyce, let alone critically-acclaimed works like Caro’s epic on Lyndon B. Johnson, Joshi’s minute-by-minute reanimation of H.P. Lovecraft, or Parker’s generous study of Herman Melville. Borges: A Life is a well-written and enjoyable “one volume” biography intended for the average reader. Woodall keeps his personal thoughts to a minimum, rarely offering interpretations of Borges’ writing and refraining from the amateur psychoanalysis biographers so often find irresistible. Woodall keeps his focus on Borges’ life and the reception and impact of his work.
Borges: A Life is not without its detractors. Critics have found numerous faults with Woodall’s work, from nit-picking the absence of this or that influence on Borges’ style to the more serious accusation that Woodall misunderstands Borges’ place in Hispanic literature. Personally, I find myself frustrated by his lack of literary analysis, and wish Woodall would have gone deeper into Borges’ texts. The most prevalent critique is the biography’s lack of color and detail; scanning contemporary reviews, adjectives like “serviceable,” “solid,” and “straightforward” appear frequently.
These are all valid criticisms; but it remains important to consider the time in which Woodall was doing his research. Following Borges’ death, the state of Borges scholarship was rife with discord and controversy—much original material remained scattered, whether in the hands of private collectors or jealously guarded by friends and relations. At the center of this controversy was María Kodama, who even today maintains a famously tight hold on the Borges estate. Writing a comprehensive Borges biography is no simple task, and among other things, it would require Kodama’s complete cooperation. Although she agreed to be interviewed for Woodall’s book, she declined to grant it “authorization,” nor would she provide a blurb or any form of recommendation. Simply put, Kodama denied Woodall the resources he needed as a serious biographer.
Woodall’s trials with Kodama are the focus of the book’s “Afterword,” and make fascinating reading, if occasionally suggesting the tart smack of sour grapes. (The Economist accused him of “sulking.”) However, it is not cynical to mention that soon after The Man in the Mirror of the Book was published, another Borges biography hit the shelves, Edwin Williamson’s Borges: A Life. Published by Viking, a company with a long association with Borges, Williamson had the full support of María Kodama, and several critics noted that his biography presents her in a rather positive light. (A review of Williamson’s biography follows these remarks on Woodall’s.) The situation is further complicated by the names of the two biographies. When The Man in the Mirror of the Book was published in the United States and Canada in 1996, it was retitled as Borges: A Life. Why Williamson’s biography confusingly adopted that same name in 2004 is open to speculation.
As of today, Woodall’s Borges: A Life is one of three significant Borges biographies available in English. Standing between Monegal’s flaws and Williamson’s peculiarities, Woodall’s book also splits the difference in terms of length, breadth, and depth. For the general Borges enthusiast, this gives Woodall’s readable biography a Goldilocks appeal—Borges: A Life may be “just right.”
Con Borges
With Borges
With Borges
By Alberto Manguel.
1. Con Borges: Grupo Editorial Norma, 2003.
2. With Borges: Telegram Books, 2006.
In 1964, Alberto Manguel was a sixteen year old clerk at Pigmalion, a Buenos Aires bookstore frequented by Borges. One day Borges asked Manguel if he’s like to become one of his “readers,” spending evenings at Borges’ apartment and reading to the blind writer from his collection of books. Manguel accepted, and thus began a friendship that lasted until Borges’ death in 1986.
Manguel went on to become a well-regarded writer himself, his books praising the virtues of bibliophilia and expressing an almost mystical appreciation for libraries. In 2003 Manguel published Con Borges, a memoir of his teenage years reading for Borges. Translated into French, it won the 2003 Prix du livre en Poitou-Charente, and was quickly translated into English by Manguel himself.
With Borges it is not a lengthy book; double-spaced, it occupies 77 pages, and can be read in under two hours. Manguel’s narrative alternates between italicized “direct impressions” of Borges seen through the eyes of a young reader, and longer, more mature reflections offered by an adult Manguel many years after Borges’ passing:
‘Can you write this down?’ He means the words he has just composed and which he has learned by hear. He dictates them one by one, intoning the cadences he loves and speaking out the punctuation marks…
For Borges, the core reality lay in books; reading books, writing books, talking about books. In a visceral way, we was conscious of continuing a dialogue begun thousands of years before and which he believed would never end. Books restored the past. ‘In time,’ he said to me, ‘every poem becomes an elegy.’ he had no patience with faddish literary theories and blamed French literature in particular for concentrating not on books but on schools and côteries.
This dual narrative is surprisingly effective at conveying the sensation of genuine memory, with all its dreamy timelessness, dislocated chronologies, and sudden flashes of precision.
For those already acquainted with Borges through his many biographies and interviews, With Borges treads familiar ground, and Manguel offers little new information. We hear of Borges’ spartan apartment, his close relationship with his mother, and his encyclopedic memory for recitation. However, Manguel’s fondness for Borges infuses every sentence with unaffected warmth, and here and there a moment of quiet revelation slips through—Borges’ vest-pocket handkerchiefs, quietly perfumed by his maid; his periodic discovery and loss of Mozart; the blind writer using his library as a bank vault, squirreling away bills in the pages of his books, only to retrieve them months later with (sometimes) uncanny precision.
Even more interesting are Manguel’s criticisms of Borges, offered with the reluctant air of a disappointed nephew reproving a beloved uncle. While these flaws are not enough to irredeemably tarnish his mentor, Manguel offers no excuses for them either, and rebukes Borges’ casual racism, his disingenuous lapses of memory, and his occasional moments of cruelty. This latter quality is illustrated by one of the most interesting anecdotes in the book. Manguel’s tale of Borges quietly crushing a lesser writer attempting a misguided homage is brutal but undeniably funny:
But he could also be pointedly cruel. Once, as we were sitting in the living room, a writer whose name I don’t want to remember came to read to Borges a story he had written in his honor. Because it dealt with knifers and hoodlums he thought Borges would enjoy it. Borges prepared himself to listen; the hands on the cane, the slightly parted lips, the eyes staring upwards suggested, to someone who did not know him, a sort of polite meekness. The story was set in a tavern filled with low-life characters. The neighborhood police inspector, known for his bravery, comes in unarmed and merely through the authority of his voice forces the men to give up their weapons. Then the writer, with enthusiasm, began listing them: ‘a dagger, two revolvers, one leather cosh…’ Borges picked up in his deadly monotone voice: ‘Three rifles, one bazooka, a small Russian cannon, five scimitars, two machetes, a mean pop-gun…’ The writer managed a small laugh. But Borges continued relentlessly: ‘Three sling-shots, one brickbat, an arbalest, five poleaxes, one battering ram…’ The writer stood up and wished us goodnight. We never saw him again.
It’s the arbalest that gets me, every time! It’s also refreshing to hear inside confirmation about Borges’ presumed dislike of Pablo Neruda and Gabriel García Márquez, two writers Manguel includes in his insightful account of Borges’ literary blind spots:
One could construct a perfectly acceptable history of literature consisting only of the authors Borges rejected: Austen, Goethe, Rabelais, Flaubert…, Proust, Zola, Balzac, Galdós, Lovecraft, Edith Wharton, Neruda, Alejo Carpentier, Thomas Mann, García Márquez, Amado, Tolstoi, Lope de Vega, Lorca, Pirandello…
Another highlight of the book are pages Manguel devotes to Adolfo Bioy Casares and Silvina Ocampo, the couple who entertained Borges nightly at their apartment. Particularly fascinating is Manguel’s portrait of the mysterious Silvina Ocampo; whose sardonic stories and “black humor” were always too “cruel” for Borges’ taste:
During the conversation, in which she did most of the talking in a sort of incantatory rhythm that haunted one for many hours afterwards, she would keep her face in the shade and her eyes behind thick dark glasses because she felt that she had ugly features, and would try to draw one’s attention to her beautiful legs, which she crossed and uncrossed incessantly.
She loved dogs. When her favorite dog died, Borges found her in tears and tried to console her by telling her that there was a Platonic dog beyond all dogs, and that every dog was The Dog. Silvina was furious, and in no uncertain terms told him to go stuff it.
These paired anecdotes nicely demonstrate the strengths of Manguel’s prose. His writing is clear and direct, yet rings with an effortless lyricism, each sentence perfectly polished but never seeming labored. He presents his subjects with a novelist’s eye for detail, sensitive to unexpected sympathies and sounding grace notes of subtle humor. While readers may wish Manguel’s memoirs were longer, With Borges is a most pleasant way to spend an afternoon.
Borges: A Life
Borges: A Life
By Edwin Williamson.
Viking, 2004.
The Borges Centennial of 1999 was the culmination of a decade that saw a significant increase in Borges scholarship across the world, from the foundation of Borges-related organizations to the release of Viking’s new translations. This renaissance called for an updated Borges biography, and two writers stepped forward to fulfill that task for the English-speaking world. The first was James Woodall, who published The Man in the Mirror of the Book, reviewed above. The second was Edwin Williamson, who published Borges: A Life several years later.
Of the two, only Williamson, a professor at Oxford University, obtained the full cooperation of María Kodama, Borges’ widow and executor. Denied this access, Woodall produced an enjoyable but simple book, one that adhered to the facts, but was accused of frequent omissions and misunderstandings. Williamson’s biography, however, is quite a different affair. Longer and more intensely researched than Woodall’s book Borges: A Life doesn’t simply provide additional details, it attempts to psychoanalyze Borges and explain the secret meanings behind his writing. Williamson’s biography portrays Borges’ life as a Freudian narrative passing through multiple stages of romantic and sexual frustration, only to achieve a kind of loving redemption at the conclusion.
This narrative is both the strength and weakness of Williamson’s book. On one hand, Borges himself becomes a literary character in his own right, and the reader finds it easy to sympathize with his ups and downs. The reader is given an “origin story”—Borges is born in a library, the product of an absent father and an overbearing mother. This compelling character goes on to navigate a life of heartbreak and disillusionment. A “mama’s boy” unable to engage with mature women, he lives his fantasies through the vivid dreamworlds of fiction, caught between the “illicit dagger” of his father and the “ancestral sword” of his mother. (No, really—“the conflict rooted in his childhood between the ancestral sword, associated with Mother, which conferred honor, distinction, legitimacy, and the dagger, associated with Father, which symbolized the illicit energy of excluded desires.”) Only upon the death of his mother does Borges find redemption, breaking his “psychological fetters” and finally embracing the healing power of love. And that love is naturally María Kodama.
While this narrative makes a gripping read, it occasionally elides Borges’ own statements and opinions as expressed in numerous interviews and essays. As some critics of the book have noted, Williamson is reluctant to offer primary sources, and spends much time paraphrasing, speculating, and suggesting ulterior motives. Like most writers with a Big Idea, Williamson attempts to fit every detail into his ideological framework. Sometimes this approach pays off, as when Williamson contextualizes Borges’ fraught relationships with Estela Canto and Norah Lange. At other times it feels like academic B.S., such as his appraisal of “The Aleph”—“The Aleph would come to represent an abiding aspiration to achieve a unity of being in which the self could be fully realized yet integrated in the objective reality of the world.” At his worse, Dr. Williamson robs Borges of his own agency, transforming him into a Freudian puppet of subconscious forces—“…this story addresses Borges’s old anxieties about being a coward… He was caught in his double bind once more, paralyzed by his instinctive reluctance to submit to his mother, yet bereft of any faith in his own capacity to rebel.”
The enjoyment one is likely to obtain from Borges: A Life can be predicted by one’s response to these excerpts. Readers who go in for that sort of psychological drama will certainly find the book more palatable than those who prefer a less obtrusive biographer. (As for myself, I thoroughly enjoyed the book, but I was always aware I was reading another’s interpretation, and shook my cranky fist at Williamson on more than once occasion!) Curiously, Williamson displays little interest in Borges as a writer, and readers expecting to learn more about the “stories behind the stories” will be sorely disappointed. Too many important works are produced out of thin air, with Williamson clearly more interested in their psychological import than their literary quality or literary impact.
Borges: A Life works best when Williamson sets aside his interpretations and digs deep into the nuances of the period. His descriptions are always vivid, and he depicts pre-War Buenos Aires with a palpable excitement, whether following the literary feuds sparked by the spirited bohemians at Martín Fierro or detailing the internecine entanglements of Borges’ friends and associates. Williamson is an astute commentator on politics, and his analysis of Borges’ political development is a strength of the book praised by numerous reviewers.
Edwin Williamson’s Borges: A Life is extremely well-written and always interesting; but the intense focus he brings to Borges’ environment blurs around the edges when it falls upon Borges himself. Ultimately, each reader must decide how much weight to assign Williamson’s psychological interpretations. But until something better comes along, Borges: A Life stands as the most complete Borges biography available in the English language.
Borges
Borges
By Adolfo Bioy Casares.
Destino, 2009.
The “Borges Biography” page only collects biographies and memoirs available in English. This Spanish language opus is worthy of an exception, however, and Garden editor Gabriel Mesa provides the following précis:
At almost 1700 pages, Borges is a massive tome composed of those extracts from the diaries of Adolfo Bioy Casares that feature Jorge Luis Borges. The fact that Bioy Casares kept a diary for over fifty years and that he and Jorge Luis were best friends, with Borges dining at his house several times a week, explains the gargantuan amount of material. Bioy Casares worked with editor Daniel Martino to prepare the book for publication beginning in 1996, but was not able to see it in print before he died in 1999. Borges was not published until September of 2006, fully seven years later.
Borges in substantial part consists of a detailed recounting of the hundreds of conversations between Borges and Bioy Casares over the years, most of which happened over dinner. As a result, they are literally “table talk.” Bioy Casares writes on January 12, 1948, “Borges come en casa” (“Borges dines at [our] home”), and this sentence or some variation thereof will be repeated dozens of times over the coming years. (Famous diaries all seem to have their own repetitive mantra—witness Pepys’ “And so to bed.”) For those wondering how Bioy Casares kept such close recall over what Borges said at each encounter, the answer is that he took notes, dutifully recording Borges’ bon mots, ideas, impressions and opinions, positive or negative. It is clear that from the beginning Bioy Casares had an eye to recording these entries for posterity; the intimate portrait of a great man, as revealed in writing by his closest friend. The parallel to Boswell and Johnson is no accident; Bioy Casares himself translated Boswell’s Life of Johnson into Spanish, no mean task.
Much of the delight of Borges lies in hearing Jorge Luis and Bioy Casares openly opine and gossip about everything (and everyone) under the sun. They are very critical, very pointed and very funny, although (for the most part) not unkind. Most of their arrows are aimed at fair targets—coddled Argentine high society ladies, vain and untalented writers, pompous critics and so on. A description of one entry may be sufficient to convey the flavor:
On June 18, 1956, Borges dines at chez Casares. They do not dine alone, however, but in the company of the Cuban novelist Virgilio Piñera (Rene’s Flesh, Cold Stories), the Argentine writer Rodolfo Wilcock (The Temple of Iconoclasts) and two others. There is a discussion about Bioy Casares’ reluctance to lecture in public. Borges muses on the difference between a private conversation and a lecture, observing that it is in the nature of a conversation for the participants to seek to “apoderarse del silencio” (“control the silence”). There follows a conversation about ignorant Argentine writers, with anecdotes. Borges tells the story of one writer who read some novels by Dickens and couldn’t stop telling everyone about it; when he started mentioning their titles another writer took out his notebook and dutifully began writing them down. Borges finds this hilarious. Reference is also made to another writer, a poet who numbered every five of his verses, apparently because he once saw it done in a book of poems by Luis Góngora, not realizing that this was not an affectation of Góngora’s but a simple reading aid inserted by the book’s publisher. The conversation then turns to literary matters, with Piñera voicing an appreciation of H.P. Lovecraft, indicating that he is “superior to Bradbury, the Poe of his time.” After the other guests have left, Borges begs to differ, noting to Bioy Casares that Lovecraft is “cheap,” and that “the Poe of our time, or the Dostoyevsky of our time, if any, are not writers that imitate or are similar to Poe or Dostoyevsky. They will have to be original and extraordinary writers, not facsimiles of anybody.” All this in one evening, with much left out.
A word of caution—as with all diaries, Bioy Casares’ is a reflection of its time and employs language at times that today we would find offensive. For example, from the above description of the 1956 entry I left out the fact that Bioy Casares knows Virgilio Piñera and his companion to be homosexual, and uses very crude wording to describe their sexual orientation. That said, it is worth remembering that Buenos Aires in the 1950s would have been a very homophobic environment; the fact that Bioy Casares invited two gay men to dine at his house is an indication of a more tolerant outlook. Also hard to square with modern mores is the omission (with a few exceptions) of Silvina Ocampo from the diaries—she was not only Bioy Casares’ wife, but a talented author in her own right, and an important collaborator of Borges’, as well as being (one imagines) responsible for the meals Borges ate every night at her house. The oversight is unfortunate and leaves a sour taste.
María Kodama became famously irate at the publication of Borges, incensed at the fact that Bioy Casares was revealing private conversations in which Borges spoke disparagingly of other writers. Her reference to Bioy Casares, in a 2012 interview in Manhattan, as “Borges’ Salieri” resulted in a significant outcry by the Argentine literary establishment, who felt Bioy Casares was being unfairly maligned. That said, Kodama’s concerns are understandable. In the very same diary entry discussed above, Borges and Bioy Casares speak disparagingly of Ernesto Sabato (The Tunnel) and make fun of his having proclaimed himself the “Argentine Dostoyevsky” after having read Crime and Punishment. Borges then pronounces The Tunnel “slight.” It is worth remembering that Borges and Sabato engaged in a wonderful series of dialogues 18 years later that were published as Diálogos in 1976. It is unknown whether Sabato ever knew of this comment, but it’s also not clear that it matters much anymore, especially when you consider that nearly all of the people Borges and Bioy Casares gossiped about until Borges’s death over 30 years ago have likely passed away themselves. And whatever indiscretions Borges may have committed, one assumes he did so in the full knowledge that Bioy Casares was not only acting as his friend and interlocutor but also as a faithful scribe.
Borges contains a 64-page glossary of proper names with short descriptions of the individuals mentioned in the diaries but, alas, no index. The lack of an index is unforgivable as is the fact that this fascinating volume has never been translated into English.
Georgie & Elsa: Jorge Luis Borges and His Wife: The Untold Story
Georgie & Elsa: Jorge Luis Borges and His Wife: The Untold Story
By Norman Thomas di Giovanni.
The Friday Project, 2014.
This biography was written by Borges’ celebrated English-language translator, collaborator, and friend, Norman Thomas di Giovanni. Despite this friendship—or perhaps because of it—Georgie & Elsa is not the expected fond memoir, but a searing tell-all that portrays Elsa as a vain and shallow “bitch,” Borges’ mother as a controlling harridan, and Borges as an impotent mama’s boy whose marriage was an “inexplainable and mysterious mistake.” Di Giovanni himself is cast in the role of Borges’ accomplice, the best friend who helps the hapless writer extract himself from the disastrous relationship.
Although Norman Thomas di Giovanni has a reputation for being flinty, it is still a surprise to encounter such harsh descriptions and unflattering portraits of Borges and his inner circle. The book centers on Borges’ awkward relationship with Elsa, but it’s not difficult to detect the looming presence of Borges’ second wife, María Kodama, who was rarely on good terms with her husband’s old friends. After Kodama took control of the Borges estate, she severed ties with Norman Thomas di Giovanni, forcing his translations out of print and terminating his most lucrative stream of revenue.
Not a few critics have wondered if the unsavory tang of Georgie & Elsa is not the aftertaste of this sour relationship. Still, some critics have praised its forthrightness, such as Carlo Gébler, who applauds di Giovanni for providing “a real corrective to the Borges industry and the nonsense that industry promulgates.”
From the publisher, an imprint of HarperCollins:
Jorge Luis Borges, known as Georgie to his friends, married Elsa Astete Millán in 1967. Borges was sixty-eight years old at the time of the wedding; Elsa, a widow, with a son in his twenties, was eleven years younger. It proved to be a tempestuous and eventful marriage that would leave an indelible mark on the remainder of Borges’ life, but their relationship has been largely glossed over by previous biographers. This is because the one person who knew all the details has refused to speak about it.
Until now.
Norman Thomas di Giovanni worked with Borges in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and in Buenos Aires from late 1967 to 1972 and thereafter sporadically until Borges’s death in 1986. During their first period together di Giovanni spent more time with the couple than did almost anyone else. He was privy to the private side of their relationship and to its sudden decline. It was di Giovanni who helped the demoralized Borges by organizing and arranging his divorce and at the same time rescuing his library and smuggling him out of Buenos Aires to avoid the wrath of Elsa and her lawyers.
The book is based on the author’s extensive collection of original material in the form of diaries, notebooks, letters, manuscripts, and photographs, most of which has never before been seen. It provides a unique insight into one of the few true geniuses of literature.
Borges Criticism
Main Page — Return to the Borges Criticism main page and index.
General Criticism 1 — General literary criticism and commentary written during Borges’ life, 1965–1986.
General Criticism 2 — General literary criticism and commentary written from 1987 to the present.
Comparative Criticism — Borges criticism with a strong political, cultural, or linguistic component, including postcolonial criticism, genre studies, and author comparisons.
Religious & Esoteric Criticism — Borges criticism from a religious, metaphysical, or philosophical perspective.
Scientific Criticism — Borges criticism within the disciplines of science, mathematics, and technology.
Authors: Allen B. Ruch and Gabriel Mesa
Last Modified: 11 November 2019
Main Borges Page: The Garden of Forking Paths
Contact: quail(at)shipwrecklibrary(dot)com