Advice from Borges

Read this last night, and thought to offer it for a side-by-side comparison to the Gerrold post of yesterday.

If Ray Bradbury is my literary master, the writer whose style I’d most enjoy being compared to, Jorge Luis Borges is my ultimate model for inspiration. I share many, many traits with him, other than, of course, his early success and phenomenal genius. In a parallel universe I majored in literature in college, and did my dissertation on the life and works of this incredible man. To say anymore would not do this man justice, not in this short post, nor could any post I could write, really.

Anyway, here’s what I read, in a book of a couple of lectures he gave in the 1960s.


Had I to give advice to writers (and I do not think they need it, because everyone has to find out things for himself), I would tell them simply this: I would ask them to tamper as little as they can with their own work. I do not think tinkering does any good. The moment comes when one has found out what one can do – when one has found one’s natural voice, one’s rhythm. Then I do not think that slight emendations should prove useful.

When I write, I do not think of the reader (because the reader is an imaginary character), and I do not think of myself (perhaps I am an imaginary character also), but I think of what I am trying to convey and I do my best not to spoil it.


Humble little ant that I am, I agree wholeheartedly!

Now: find Labyrinths, Borges’ collection of short stories, essays, and poems, and browse through it. The pieces that left a profound impression on me are: “The Library of Babel,” “Funes the Memorious,” and, of course, “Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius.” Sheer weirdness cloaked in the respectability of literary timelessness!