Misery is a sinus infection. But there are benefits to being out of comission for a while. Yesterday I pulled off my book shelf something I haven't read for a long time: Jorge Luis Borges Collected Fictions. When I first read this author I moaned and groaned. Some fellow moaners and groaners, upon reading this posting, will roll their disbelieving eyes, maybe even scream and yell. Back then were were forced to read: an assignment for a writing workshop. And we were assigned some of his more shall we say imaginative stories. Kind of out there.
The Garden of Forking Paths, if I remember correctly, was urreal. At the top of Death and the Compas, I had scribbled "I feel like I have accomplished a great feat by finishing and understanding this story." I also had underlined words and squeezed in their meaning: a dictionary (English and Spanish at least) and reference books at hand were a requirement for Reading Borges.) As I recall, in the end I decided I would read him again.
I have found the foreward to his Brodie's Report very incouraging for writers, which I have the audacity to call myself. Let me quote: "Incredible as it may seem, there are certain punctilious men and women who act as a sort of 'trivia police.' They will note for example, Martin Fierro would have talked about a bag of bones, not a sack, and they will ctiticize (perhaps unfairly, perhaps not) the golden-pink coat of a certain horse famous in our literature." Borges did not let that stop him from being free to be Borges, so why should I let the ever present critics stop me from being Mickey Getty.
My favorite book, the one I am reading in my photo, The Junk Lottery, written by me. And by no means in the same league with Borges, though my writing can not but grow because of him
