The Conspirators: A Tribute to Jorge Luis Borges

This is a collection of fourteen pieces, written in tribute to Jorge Luis Borges, and edited by Alcebiades Diniz Miguel, who also contributed one of the fourteen pieces.  Other notable authors include Rhys Hughes, Mark Valentine and John Howard (in collaboration), Justin Isis, Jonathan Wood, Brednan Connell, D.P. Watt, Adam Cantwell and Eric Stener Carlson.

The bulk of the stories are good to excellent. Only one, the opening tale by Rhys Hughes, did I find labored and dull. The best story was that by D.P. Watt (a writer new to me), together with the bookish tale by Mark Valentine and John Howard. Most are openly Borgesian in nature, some more so than others.  In all a good read and a good tribute. 

Another Borges

Having just read Doctor Brodie's Report, I still felt the need for more Borges, so I turned to the anthology Extraordinary Tales, by Borges and Adolfo Bioy Casares, translated in 1971 by Anthony Kerrigan, and originally published in Spanish in 1953. Basically, it's a collection of passages, often of some kind of transformational scenes (mythological, philosophical, historical), from the editors' wide reading through world literature. Most source are verifiable, but some are not (or the passages that are given do not appear in the work cited), so there is some of the usual Borgesian playfulness. Overall, the tales are moderately interesting, but there are no real classics. Again, not first-tier Borges, but not without interest.

Doctor Brodie's Report

In the Afterword to Doctor Brodie's Report (1970), Jorge Luis Borges notes that these eleven short stories are the first he has written since 1953.  Thus they can be considered late-Borges, which is different from classic-Borges, which includes such first-class tales as "The Aleph," "Tlon, Uqbar and Orbis Tertius" and many others.  Though the tales collected in Doctor Brodie's Report appeared in English in such venues as The New Yorker (five stories), The Atlantic Monthly, and Harper's Magazine, they remain second-rate Borges, but they are all worth reading.  The best stories in the book are the first, "The Gospel According to Mark," and the last, titular story "Doctor Brodie's Report."