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Is Borges the 20th Century’s most important writer?

bbc.com

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Re: Is Borges the 20th Century’s most important writer?

#11

Post by toyg »

diego_moita wrote: post #4

One thing that bothers me about the English literary culture is how indifferent it is to writers in other languages. Borges always was my best example. Another one is the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa. What other non-english writers do you think should receive more world attention?

> English literary culture is [...] indifferent [...] to writers in other languages.

That's particularly true of booksellers in England, so I'm not sure whether the resulting landscape is a cause or an effect of commercial arrangements. Outside of the London - Oxbridge axis, it's very hard to find bookshops stocking anything more than US/UK writers. Coming from Italy (where it's often hard to find works by Italian authors in the average bookshop), it was a shock I never really recovered from.

Re: Is Borges the 20th Century’s most important writer?

#12

Post by stephencanon »

diego_moita wrote: post #4

One thing that bothers me about the English literary culture is how indifferent it is to writers in other languages. Borges always was my best example. Another one is the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa. What other non-english writers do you think should receive more world attention?

Really? Borges casts an enormous shadow across modern American literary culture; you'll be hard pressed to find anyone who is indifferent to him. Like Nabokov, this is partially due to his academic influence, but his writing was hugely influential as well. Most American college students with a literary interest will have at least read the Ficciones.

Re: Is Borges the 20th Century’s most important writer?

#13

Post by wslh »

diego_moita wrote: post #4

One thing that bothers me about the English literary culture is how indifferent it is to writers in other languages. Borges always was my best example. Another one is the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa. What other non-english writers do you think should receive more world attention?

Obviously Julio Cortazar: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julio_Cortázar

Re: Is Borges the 20th Century’s most important writer?

#14

Post by copperx »

mrwarn wrote: post #8
diego_moita wrote: post #4

One thing that bothers me about the English literary culture is how indifferent it is to writers in other languages. Borges always was my best example. Another one is the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa. What other non-english writers do you think should receive more world attention?

Brasilian author Paulo Coelho is another great one. His novel "The Alchemist" is a classic.

You must be kidding, right?

Re: Is Borges the 20th Century’s most important writer?

#15

Post by kafkaesque »

I majored in Spanish literature and philosophy. I wrote quite a bit on Borges and wanted to write my thesis on him (more specifically, how translation affected his work and views--translation as art, if you will).

I never went to graduate school, but I continued writing what was going to be my thesis.

It's nowhere near finished but if I can make one book recommendation I would say read Ficciones.

There are different layers to Borges and many, many, many ways to read him, but if I can give you one single reason why this writer is one of the greatest figures of all time, it is because he traces how a concept or thought was developed or created with the help of different minds (writers, philosophers, historical figures, literary figures, etc.). He doesn't always explicitly indicate who, but, as the article says, everything he wrote (and sometimes said) was a clue to what he was thinking. He was trying to make sense of an entire history and an entire world by organising how a particular concept was handed down from author to author and how it was mutated.

Why is this of value to us? Because the act of developing a thought or a concept teaches us how to think critically and coherently, looking for how mistakes were done and seeing the bigger picture when linking two general thoughts together.

Or it could all have been in jest.

Re: Is Borges the 20th Century’s most important writer?

#17

Post by pndmnm »

diego_moita wrote: post #4

One thing that bothers me about the English literary culture is how indifferent it is to writers in other languages. Borges always was my best example. Another one is the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa. What other non-english writers do you think should receive more world attention?

For me, László Krasznahorkai, Carsten Jensen, Karl Ove Knausgaard, and Roberto Bolaño are some of the best recent non-English writers around.

Re: Is Borges the 20th Century’s most important writer?

#20

Post by andrewbinstock »

diego_moita wrote: post #4

One thing that bothers me about the English literary culture is how indifferent it is to writers in other languages. Borges always was my best example. Another one is the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa. What other non-english writers do you think should receive more world attention?

I don't know about that. Borges, Sartre, Nabokov were widely translated and read. Among the less purely intellectual, St. Exupery, Coelho, Umberto Eco, Carlos Ruiz Zafon, are regularly found in US bookstores.
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