Ok. The month has started and I hope there’s been time for enough people to get the book so we can start discussing. Since I don’t know how far people have read, and still expect a couple more to join in the next two or three days, I’ll make a post about the history of this book for now.
On the Christmas eve of 1938, Borges had a serious accident in which he injured his head; during the treatment, he almost died of sepsis. By that time, he was already a cult classic among the academia for his essays and poetry. His philosophy was young and playful, and his poems were fresh and vivid. Although perhaps not a public figure of Buenos Aires at that point, he was already pretty notorious within his scene. So it was with great despair that he received the news that his injury had apparently damaged the language region of his brain, and that the doctors didn’t know exactly what effects that would have.
Borges later confessed that his first incursion in fiction wasn’t completely incidental. Being already somewhat notorious for his essays and poetry, he felt he just wouldn’t be able to face failure in composing a piece of either… But as for stories, he had never done them before, failure could just as well mean he sucked at it. So he started gathering material and ideas for a story while still in the hospital — success at this enterprise would mean no loss of writing capacity, while failure would pretty much mean nothing. And so during his first days out of the hospital he composed what would be his first short story. That story was “Pierre Menard”.
Those who read it will see how he actually wasn’t able to keep himself from risking an essay in his first short story. That dual style of writing, that style Borges would later become famous worldwide for, was actually born of his fear of having lost his capacity to write essays. After having “Pierre Menard” published in the Sur magazine, being received with much praise, he decided to write another one. And another one. And another one. And so he composed the pieces — or fictions — of the first book in our collection, The Garden of Forking Paths.
So that’s how it all started. I wish everyone a happy reading, and I’ll be back with something about the first few stories, tomorrow.