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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?
But, as an outsider, they seem reasonably well known among english speakers (and so is Borges).
Are there any translations of Borges that our local aficionados would recommend over others?
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0140286802/?tag=mh0b-20&hvadid=3524...
ISBN: 0-14-028680-2
It's a complete collection of his short-story fiction, which is nice. I think the translation is pretty good, and I appreciate the footnotes which give deeper explanations of aspects of Argentinean history that he references. I haven't comprehensively reviewed translations, but I do feel this one captures more of his work than most freely-available translations I've seen on the interwebs.
I have no suggestions for his poetry, sorry.
I took a class called "The Foundations of Great Ideas" my freshman year of college where we got to read The Library of Babel. I wrote a paper arguing the Internet was The Library of Babel. I firmly stand behind this.
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?
Raymond Queneau, Italo Calvino, Stanisław Lem. But, as an outsider, they seem reasonably well known among english speakers (and so is Borges).
"We're sorry but this site is not accessible from the UK as it is part of our international service and is not funded by the licence fee." God that makes me rage. It's even worse than a paywall as it's completely nonsensical.
There is a marginally more satisfying half-explanation at http://halfblog.net/2013/01/16/why-is-this-bbc-website-not-a...
I've enjoyed reading Borges, and I think there is much to be said for his work. But the 20th Century included the writing years of (mostly at random) Joyce, Musil, Proust, Eliot, (most of) Yeats, and Nabokov, to name only a few, who were as good as Borges at what they did, and did a good deal more.
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?
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.
The library of Babel is here. You and I are sitting in it.
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'm not sure I follow. Why would English "literary culture" care about content in other languages? Are we talking about translations here?
Because, you know, if it's not about the translations. Then I'd pretty much just go ahead and answer your conundrum: "It's in a different language."