There Is No Borges - Hardcover

Kopf, Gerhard

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0807613231 ISBN 13: 9780807613238

Publisher: Braziller, George Inc, 1993

Synopsis

There Is No Borges might be described as an epic mystery, for the elusive subject of the narrator's quest is the great Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges, creator of brilliant imaginary worlds. To the narrator, the world of literature means more than reality, a sentiment echoed by "Nothing is more precise than fiction." If this is true, perhaps Borges is one of his own fictive creations. The narrator, a German professor of "Lusitanics, " both the science of loss and the history of Portugal, is invited to Macao for a lecture tour; professionally and emotionally at life's end, he travels under the auspices of Borges, Cervantes, Conrad's Almayer, and other more or less esoteric and imaginary literary figures. If Borges is fiction, then how much of the future is, as Borges self-consciously writes, a series of memories of the past? As the professor considers the Lusitania, sunk by German torpedoes in 1915, he wonders about the limits of governmental greed, about Tiananmen Square, and World War II. In the inverted mirror of his own Borgesian vision, the professor confronts his country's past, his family's past, and the degree to which we are condemned to repeat history. "Every book is a mirror of the face bent over it, " writes Kopf's professor. There Is No Borges, written with kaleidoscopic brilliance and wonder, is full of conclusions and suggestions, leads and dead ends. Among the many questions it poses is whether we should not examine the ghosts that lie as much in books as in our own histories.

About this title

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: German

From Kirkus Reviews

Quirky flights of fantasy and the literary imagination--in which Borges is alternately a figure of substance and a fabrication--occupy this surreal tale of a disenchanted academic on a lecture tour of the Far East, from German novelist K”pf in his US debut. Books are the only reality for the professor, whose area of specialization is ``Lusitanics,'' which he succinctly describes as ``the science of loss.'' He measures all that exists by its superior formulation in literature, and has a special affinity for the works of Borges, Cervantes, and Conrad--to such a degree that his own travels evoke comparisons with those of Don Quixote or Conrad's Almayer. An airborne discussion with an Argentinean traveler and fellow admirer of Borges, who believes that the writer was actually an impersonation, the work of a talented actor, fails to be greatly disturbed when the plane loses engine power and begins a rapid descent. That adventure safely concluded, other speculations follow in which Cervantes and Shakespeare are declared one and the same person, and the narrator's family is analyzed for character flaws, while the professor himself is unable to decide whether he should exist in first- or third-person in his narrative. The teeming backdrop of the Portuguese colony of Macao adds to the m‚lange of impressions, contributing to the sensory overload of the real and the speculative that culminates in a series of dreamlike encounters with Borges--or his doppelg„nger--in a dimly lit hotel corridor, as each man attempts to use the toilet undisturbed. A literary curiosity: intricate enough to be challenging, but ultimately too full of itself to sustain more than an academic interest. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: Braziller, George Inc
• Publication date: 1993
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0807613231
• ISBN 13: 9780807613238
• Binding: Hardcover