We were never being Borges

The autumn of 2005 was the height of my Geoff Dyer period. During that time I didn't just read his books, I read everything I could get my hands on: archived New Statesman reviews from 1987 at the U of C library, articles dug from the deepest corners of cyberspace and introductions to F. Scott Fitzgerald novels I had no interest in reading (that is to say all of them). Once these areas had been exhausted, I began to explore his literary heroes (as well as his favourite music, which probably explains why I've become such a jazz fiend, though I'm having trouble tracking down The Necks) and this began with Dyer's mentor, the great John Berger.

Strange how whenever I'm thinking aloud about getting into someone new - literary or musical - that everyone has this idea of just where I should "start". Curious, too, that these places to start are never all that interesting. Still, I guess it's a crime against suspense if I were to have discovered beautiful works like and our faces, my heart, brief as photos, Photocopies or Here is Where We Meet before the comparatively dull Ways of Seeing.

In his intro to Berger's Selected Essays, Dyer name drops a few exotic literary exports, the kind (aside from, presumably, Berger himself) that England no longer seems to be able to produce: Jorge Luis Borges, Italo Calvino, Milan Kundera, W.G. Sebald. Those four names were where I needed to go. And since being in Korea I've read at least one book by each member of this distinguished quartet.

But the results have been somewhat mixed. I'm planning a seperate blog entry on finding Kundera baffling and decidedly unmoving experienceso I won't get into that here, nor will I praise Sebald's damn-near miraculous prose. What I want to write about is the real Borges and the fake Borges that my mind created.

I didn't know what to make of Borges at first and I'm not sure that was entirely because I chose to start reading it on my unspeakably boring Korean Airlines flight (nor do I want to blame Borges for aiding in the trip's dullness factor). The book reviews of fake books and metaphysical elucidations felt like the kind of thing I could only admire but never enjoy. Then I read "Funes, His Memory" and "The Book of Sand" and I was hooked. I like to think of his work at alchemical: his imagination didn't clash with his detailed, erudite mind, it complemented it. They always say of the original that if they didn't exist, you'd have to invent them; if Borges had never existed, no one would've ever thought to.

The Borges fixation persisted to the extent that even when I was reading someone else I was still trying to read him. And this was especially the case when I finally got down to reading Calvino. Sure, Invisible Cities is great, a major work though, I believed at the time, spoken by a less than major voice. I found him gimmicky and, in the case of If on a winter's night a traveller, far too clever for his own good. My praise was even somewhat backhanded: is it really a complement to anyone other than Borges if their imagination is described as Borgesian? In spite of (or, perhaps, because of) loving one of his books, I felt that I couldn't take him seriously, that he was little more than a sideshow for the mighty Sebald or Borges.

But yesterday I picked up a used copy of The Baron in the Trees and, just four chapters in, I know my Calvino period is set to commence. I wonder if he too recognized his lack of a voice and dealt with it by communicating his vast ideas through the voices of others. Borges could be writing from the perspective of an Argentine gaucho, a Nazi war criminal facing execution or a Scandinavian philosopher but he is still Borges and only Borges. Calvino seems to toy with voices, giving each of his works a distinct quality that never could be blended in with another - the bit in If on a winter's night where he speaks for the reader not believing this to be one of his books would seem to apply to all of them (and, as such, to none of them).

Previously, Calvino suffered for not being Borges; now he benefits for being Calvino, whoever or whatever he or that may be. Let's start the insanity.