Comments on: Friday Column: When Is It Okay to Read About an Author’s Private Life?

By: Robert Nagle

Robert Nagle — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 02:05:04 +0000

You know, Scott, I’ve always remembered that Manguel anecdote about imagining a bear from this post.
I’m embroiled in a lawsuit and was planning to use that anecdote about Borges in my testimony as a metaphor for what the opposition is doing. (I’ll let you know if I actually get a chance to use that quote in my trial in late April).
Hope you are well. BTW, sorry I haven’t commented in a while (and actually I’m a few months behind on CR), but last September I read about 2 months of CR in the middle of the night on my PDA in a bus going through Kukes, Albania into Kosovo. (I have a program for reading RSS feeds offline).
I really love the Quarterly Conversation, especially the Bolano (sigh! it will probably take another decade before I get around to him).

By: dario

dario — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 12:59:19 +0000

There is a typo. It`s Eça de Queiroz.

By: jacob

jacob — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 16:10:12 +0000

There’s at least one English translation of Silvina Ocampo: “Leopoldina’s Dream,” a selection of short stories published by Penguin in the late 80s. It’s out of print, but you can find cheap used copies from the usual online booksellers.
I am equally baffled by the paucity of in-print translations of Ocampo and Bioy Casares — not to mention the Bustos Domecq stories coauthored by Borges.

By: Scott

Scott — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 21:10:03 +0000

Marcelo,
I agree that Manguel’s take on Borges is very one-sided. With Borges was definitely meant to be a fond look at a man Manguel obviously admires, and at times I thought he was straining to put Borges into a positive light.
I do love getting caught up in details, though.

By: William Patrick Wend

William Patrick Wend — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 01:40:22 +0000

I have similiar ill feelings toward the cult of authorship and biography in general, but also find Borges’ private life too interesting to pass up. He was certainly a strange, but rather fascinating, man indeed. That dog story is hilarious and is not surprising coming from Borges at all.
Another author from Borges’ circle of friends who I am surprised has not caught on in America is Norah Lange. As far as I know, very little of her work has been translated to English.

By: Marcelo

Marcelo — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 19:06:39 +0000

Other people who read to Borges don’t have recollections as fond as those of Manguel; I met someone who still resented Borges’s overbearing guidance on how to pronounce foreign words and remembered having to slog through Old English texts that he didn’t even understand, for the great man’s benefit. I think Manguel mentions it, but of course, the person who logged the most time reading to Borges was his own mother, Leonor Acevedo Suarez (1876-1975), who was his first-string reader and personal secretary once he lost his eyesight. Thanks Scott, I enjoyed the column, though I don’t agree with the Nabokovian theory of reading, favoring general absorption more than detail-sniffing.

By: Scott

Scott — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 15:32:25 +0000

No, but I actually have a copy with me. As I understand, he discusses Bioy Casares and other Argentines.

By: M

Fri, 28 Mar 2008 21:57:32 +0000

Have you read his “Reading Diary”?