The Borges Factor
Original title: El factor Borges
This book is not a detective novel or a story of spies. It is an essay about reading. An instruction manual for readers to understand the work of Jorge Luís Borges. Some people look for the Holy Grail, others search for Moby Dick; with the same tenaciousness, this book tracks down the clues that will lead to the discovery of the Borges Factor. Pauls inspects the fingerprints and studies the magic molecule that makes Borges who he is, overcoming the numerous interpretations, readings and translations that have tried to make Borges fit into our world; this book aims, on the other hand, to make the world more Borgesian. On the way, the author finds a a happy failure: there is no Borges factor, there are many. Alan Pauls, himself an extraordinary novelist, demonstrates that he is also a magnificent and incisive essayist.
This book is not a detective novel or a story of spies. It is an essay about reading. An instruction manual for readers to understand the work of Jorge Luís Borges. Some people look for the Holy Grail, others search for Moby Dick; with the same tenaciousness, this book tracks down the clues that will lead to the discovery of the Borges Factor. Pauls inspects the fingerprints and studies the magic molecule that makes Borges who he is, overcoming the numerous interpretations, readings and translations that have tried to make Borges fit into our world; this book aims, on the other hand, to make the world more Borgesian. On the way, the author finds a a happy failure: there is no Borges factor, there are many. Alan Pauls, himself an extraordinary novelist, demonstrates that he is also a magnificent and incisive essayist.
