Conversations

Jorge Luis Borges, one of the indisputably great writers of the 20th century, was born in Buenos Aires in 1899. Never having been awarded the Nobel Prize, which his readers worldwide believed he deserved, this story writer, poet, essayist & man of letters died at age 86. This anthology of interviews with him features more than a dozen conversations that cover all phases of his life & work. Conducted between 1964-84, the interviews reveal him as a remarkably candid, humorous man, by turns skeptical & enthusiastic, & always a singularly incisive & adventurous thinker. He discusses his blindness, his family & childhood, early travels, literary friends & struggles to find his literary identity. In depth he examines the meanings & intentions of his own famous stories & poems, & he speaks of the writers whose works he has loved--Dante, Cervantes, Emerson, Dickinson, H.G. Wells, Kafka, Stevenson, Kipling, Whitman, Frost & Faulkner--& of those whom he disliked, such as Hemingway & Lorca. Borges expresses his contempt for Péron & assesses the tumultuous politics of Argentina. He speaks also of the imagination as a type of dreaming, about issues of collaboration & translation, about philosophy & about time. Many of the interviews were conducted by notable figures, including Alastair Reid, Willis Barnstone & Ronald Christ. As Borges speaks in these conversations, readers who have fallen under the spell of his magical prose & poetry will find additional sustenance.
Richard Burgin's books include the story collections Feat of Blue Skies, Private Fame & Man without Memory. In his 1st book on Borges, Conversations with Jorge Luis Borges, he was the sole interviewer. Burgin is the editor of Boulevard magazine & an associate professor of communication & English at St Louis University.