Selected Non-Fictions

by Borges, Jorge Luis (Author); Weinberger, Eliot (Editor); Allen, Esther (Translator)

• ISBN13: 9780140290110
• ISBN10: 0140290117
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-11-01
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)

Summary

This unique volume presents a Borges almost entirely unknown to American readers: his extraordinary non-fiction prose. Borges' unlimited curiosity and almost superhuman erudition become, in his essays, reviews, lectures, and political and cultural notes.

Table of Contents

A Note on This Edition	xi
Early Writings 1922--1928	1	(40)
The Nothingness of Personality	3	(7)
After Images	10	(2)
Joyce's Ulysses	12	(4)
A History of Angels	16	(4)
Verbiage for Poems	20	(3)
A Profession of Literary Faith	23	(5)
Literary Pleasure	28	(4)
An Investigation of the Word	32	(9)
1929--1936	41	(112)
The Perpetual Race of Achilles and the Tortoise	43	(5)
The Duration of Hell	48	(4)
The Superstitious Ethics of the Reader	52	(4)
Our Inabilities	56	(3)
The Postulation of Reality	59	(6)
A Defense of Basilides the False	65	(4)
The Homeric Versions	69	(6)
Narrative Art and Magic	75	(8)
A Defense of the Kabbalah	83	(4)
The Art of Verbal Abuse	87	(5)
The Translators of The Thousand and One Nights	92	(18)
I, a Jew	110	(2)
The Labyrinths of the Detective Story and Chesterton	112	(3)
The Doctrine of Cycles	115	(8)
A History of Eternity	123	(17)
Film Reviews and Criticism	140	(13)
The Cinematograph, The Biograph	140	(3)
Films	143	(2)
Street Scene	145	(1)
King Kong	146	(1)
The Informer	147	(1)
Two Films (Crime and Punishment; The Thirty-nine Steps)	148	(1)
The Petrified Forest	149	(1)
Wells, the Visionary	150	(3)
Writings For EL Hogar (Home) Magazine 1936--1939	153	(44)
Ramon Llull's Thinking Machine	155	(5)
When Fiction Lives in Fiction	160	(3)
Capsule Biographies	163	(12)
Isaac Babel	163	(1)
Ernest Bramah	164	(1)
Benedetto Croce	165	(1)
Theodore Dreiser	166	(1)
T.S. Eliot	167	(1)
Will James	168	(1)
Liam O'Flaherty	169	(1)
Oswald Spengler	170	(1)
Paul Valery	171	(1)
S. S. Van Dine	172	(1)
Virginia Woolf	173	(2)
Book Reviews and Notes	175	(22)
Der Engel vom Westlichen Fenster	175	(1)
Gustav Meyrink
Private Opinion	175	(1)
Alan Pryce-Jones
The Pursuer	176	(1)
Louis Golding
Lord Halifax's Ghost Book	177	(1)
Absalom! Absalom!	178	(1)
William Faulkner
Gubben Kommer	179	(1)
Gustaf Janson
Stories, Essays and Poems	180	(1)
Aldous Huxley
Collected Poems and Plays	180	(1)
Rabindranath Tagore
The Door Between	181	(1)
Ellery Queen
Personality Survives Death	182	(1)
Sir William Barrett
Wolfram Eberhard, tr., Chinese Fairy Tales and Folk Tales	182	(1)
The Literary Life: Marinetti	183	(1)
Excellent Intentions	184	(1)
Richard Hull
The Confessions of a Thug	185	(1)
Meadows Taylor
The Unvanquished	186	(1)
William Faulkner
The Tale of Genji	186	(1)
Lady Murasaki
Patches of Sunlight	187	(2)
Lord Dunsany
Two Fantasy Novels	189	(1)
The Literary Life: Oliver Gogarty	190	(1)
An English Version of the Oldest Songs in the World	190	(1)
Of Course, Vitelli!	191	(1)
Alan Griffiths
A Grandiose Manifesto from Breton	191	(2)
H. G. wells' Latest Novel	193	(1)
Delphos, or the Future of International Language	194	(1)
E. S. Pankhurst
Joyce's Latest Novel	195	(1)
The Literary Life: The Dionne Quints	196	(1)
1937--1945	197	(68)
Notes on Germany & the War	199	(15)
A Pedagogy of hatred	199	(1)
A Disturbing Exposition	200	(2)
An Essay on Neutrality	202	(1)
Definition of a Germanophile	203	(3)
1941	206	(1)
Two Books	207	(3)
A Comment on August 23, 1944	210	(2)
A Note on the Peace	212	(2)
The Total Library	214	(3)
Time and J. W. Dunne	217	(3)
A Fragment on Joyce	220	(2)
The Creation and P.H. Gosse	222	(3)
Circular Time	225	(4)
John Wilkins' Analytical Language	229	(4)
On Literary Description	233	(3)
On William Beckford's Vathek	236	(4)
Coleridge's Flower	240	(3)
Prologues	243	(6)
The Invention of Morel	243	(2)
Adolfo Bioy Casares
Bartleby the Scrivener	245	(2)
Herman Melville
The Abasement of the Northmores	247	(2)
Henry James
Book Reviews	249	(8)
Mathematics and the Imagination	249	(1)
Edward Kasner
James Newman
Rudyard Kipling: A Study in Literature and Political Ideas	250	(2)
Edward Shanks
Monkey	252	(2)
Arthur Waley
Leslie Weatherhead, After Death	254	(3)
Film Reviews and Criticism	257	(8)
Two Films (Sabotage; Los muchachos de antes)	257	(1)
An Overwhelming Film (Citizen Kane)	258	(1)
Transformed	259	(2)
Dr. Jekyll
Mr. Hyde
Two Films (Now Voyager; Nightmare)	261	(1)
On Dubbing	262	(3)
Nine Dantesque Essays 1945--1951	265	(42)
Prologue	267	(5)
The Noble Castle of the Fourth Canto	272	(5)
The False Problem of Ugolino	277	(3)
The Last Voyage of Ulysses	280	(4)
The Pitying Torturer	284	(3)
Dante and the Anglo-Saxon Visionaries	287	(5)
Purgatorio I, 13	292	(2)
The Simurgh and the Eagle	294	(4)
The Meeting in a Dream	298	(4)
Beatrice's Last Smile	302	(5)
1946--1955	307	(128)
Our Poor Individualism	309	(2)
The Paradox of Apollinaire	311	(3)
On Oscar Wilde	314	(3)
A New Refutation of Time	317	(16)
Biathanatos	333	(4)
From Allegories to Novels	337	(4)
From Someone to Nobody	341	(3)
The Wall and the Books	344	(3)
Personality and the Buddha	347	(4)
Pascal's Sphere	351	(3)
The Innocence of Layamon	354	(4)
On the Cult of Books	358	(5)
Kafka and His Precursors	363	(3)
The Enigma of Edward FitzGerald	366	(3)
Coleridge's Dream	369	(4)
Forms of a Legend	373	(4)
The Scandinavian Destiny	377	(5)
The Dialogues of Ascetic and King	382	(4)
A Defense of Bouvard and Pecuchet	386	(4)
Flaubert and His Exemplary Destiny	390	(4)
A History of the Tango	394	(11)
A History of the Echoes of a Name	405	(4)
L'Illusion Comique	409	(2)
Prologues	411	(9)
The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Sketches	411	(2)
Bret Harte
On Heroes, Hero-worship and the Heroic in History, and Ralph Waldo Emerson, Representative Men	413	(5)
Thomas Carlyle
The Martian Chronicles	418	(2)
Ray Bradbury
Lectures	420	(15)
The Argentine Writer and Tradition	420	(7)
German Literature in the Age of Bach	427	(8)
Dictations 1956--1986	435	(88)
Prologues	437	(21)
The Kappa	437	(1)
Ryunosuke Akutagawa
Pages of History and Autobiography	438	(6)
Edward Gibbon
Catalog of the Exhibition Books from Spain	444	(1)
Leaves of Grass	445	(4)
Walt Whitman
Mystical Works	449	(9)
Emanuel Swedenborg
Lectures	458	(42)
The Concept of an Academy and the Celts	458	(5)
The Enigma of Shakespeare	463	(10)
Blindness	473	(10)
Immortality	483	(8)
The Detective Story	491	(9)
Prologues to The Library of Babel	500	(11)
The Library of Babel	500	(1)
The Vulture	501	(2)
Franz Kafka
The Concentric Deaths	503	(2)
Jack London
The Guest at the Last Banquets	505	(2)
Villiers de l'Isle-Adam
The Tiger Guest	507	(1)
P'u Sung-ling
Scientific Romances	508	(3)
Charles Howard Hinton
Prologues to A Personal Library	511	(12)
A Personal Library	511	(2)
Prologue to the collection	513	(1)
Stories	514	(1)
Julio Cortazar
The Apocryphal Gospels	515	(1)
The Time Machine; The Invisible Man	516	(1)
H. G. Wells
Demons	517	(1)
Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Theory of the Leisure Class	518	(1)
Thorstein Veblen
Fear and Trembling	518	(1)
Søren Kierkegaard
Virgil, The Aeneid	519	(2)
Varieties of Religious Experience; The Study of Human Nature	521	(2)
William James
Notes	523	(25)
Index	548