Other Inquisitions
Jorge Luis Borges · 1952
Borges' essays are indistinguishable from his fictions; both are exercises in philosophical speculation disguised as scholarship or storytelling. Essays on Zeno's paradoxes, Pascal's sphere, the detective story, time. The most intellectually intoxicating essays of the 20th century.
The case against
Borges read encyclopedias more devotedly than the books he cites, and it shows: quotations arrive secondhand, attributions wobble, and the erudition is partly costume. Across these brief essays he has perhaps four ideas (time is unreal, identity is porous, every writer invents his precursors) rotated through different libraries. Dazzling for an essay or two; curiously identical dazzle by the twentieth.
Essays · the Pro canon
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
if this one calls to you, so will these →
