Canongate, 2021, 309 p.

In his youth, as a post-graduate student at St Andrews escaping being drafted to Vietnam and contemplating a thesis on George MacKay Brown (a prospect his tutor deprecated on the grounds that Brown was still alive,) the author, a nervous individual from Scranton, Pennsylvania, with an overbearing mother also to escape, met Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges, who was on a visit to the town to meet a local academic, Alastair Reid, with whom Parini had formed a friendship. Despite Borges’s fame, Parini had never read a word of his.

The book is constructed, and reads, like a novel, starting with a recounting of the author’s learning of Borges’s death one morning fifteen years, plus a wife and three sons, later, triggering memories of the impact Borges had made on him. Borges and Me goes on to relate the circumstances of that meeting, the car journey through the Highlands with Parini acting as the blind Borges’s eyes it led to, and how it changed him. Thirty-six years on from that, Parini was encouraged to write it all up as a complete narrative. Such a tardy account cannot be in all respects absolutely accurate, some elisions and compressions must occur. Parini’s afterword uses the phrase ‘novelistic memoir’ to characterise it. As a result the book is therefore probably more effective than a pure memoir.

In many ways the title is apposite. Borges and Me is really more about Parini than Borges. His mother on learning of his proposed transatlantic destination said, “‘Are you crazy? Nobody goes to Scotland!’” but relented, saying, in recognition of his avoiding the Army, “‘At least you’ll be safe in Scotland, though Scotch girls have a bad reputation,’” (really?) “‘and the men apparently wear skirts.’”

We hear of Parini’s preoccupations of the time; the unread letters from the draft board he stuffed in a drawer, his learning to use the word ‘rucksack’ for ‘backpack’ and what he describes as the pretentious ‘garden’ for ‘yard’, his struggles connecting with women.

The descriptions of St Andrews are of course very familiar to me. But Alastair Reid’s warning to Parini, contrasted with his experiences in the Pacific War (World War 2 was still a huge presence in so many lives in the 1960s and 70s,) “‘Remember, this isn’t a university, it’s a film set. Don’t be fooled. The lecturers, even the students, are actors. They’re here to attract tourists,’” is only partly true. St Andrews has the golf as well to do that.

An anecdote Reid told him prompted the thought, “Was this the essence of storytelling? Did one simply have to relate a tale in a believable fashion, with the authority of the imagination?” Which is of course a comment on the present enterprise – and of fiction writing in general.

And there are reflections on the Scotland of that age. Reid says, ‘What I don’t like about Scotland is that virtue is taken for achievement. And narrowly defined. We’re always judged in this fucking country…. They don’t even take off their clothes to fuck here.’ This last prompted Reid to suggest special Scottish pyjamas, with flaps in the appropriate place so that the deed could be done as secretively as possible.

(Aside. Actually I read once that the Inuit peoples of the Arctic have clothes that are indeed equipped in such a way; but that would be for purely practical purposes, to avoid the cold, not as a moral imperative.)

As portrayed here Borges was a formidable personality with an intimidating breadth of knowledge – among other things he corrected Parini’s pronunciation of Scone (Palace.) “‘It rhymes with spoon. It’s a Pictish word’” – and also aware of his own mortality. The failings of the body did at one point lead to a comic episode in a B&B in Killiecrankie. The only toilet was off the bedroom of the widowed lady proprietor and Borges had consumed a few pints.

Parini does not pity Borges his blindness as it in some ways freed him. “No wonder he lived so fully in the great room of his mind.”

At one point Borges apparently stated, “‘Israel as a state inspires me. An intractable situation, very sad, unsolvable with Palestine: competing and equally valid claims.’” Intractable indeed.

He also had an old man’s wistfulness for the loves of his youth (and present) Doña Leonor and Maria Kodama, a contrast with the young Parini’s stated lack of experience

The final stop on the car journey, for a pilgrimage across Drumossie Moor, the battlefield of Culloden, has poignant resonances, though I must say the tourist facilities there have changed a lot since that time. Parini describes them as basic indeed. When I revisited a few years ago the visitor centre was as bright and commercial as you would find anywhere.

But Borges’s influence was profound.  “One felt somehow more intelligent, more learned and witty, in his presence. The universe itself felt more pliable and yielding, and so available.”

Borges and Me is a delightful book. An elegant tribute to the great man, a tribute to the uncertainties of youth and the potentially beneficial upshots of unexpected encounters.

Pedant’s corner:- mostly written in USian. “Orkney, a remote island off the north coast of Scotland” (Orkney is an archipelago, not a single island,)  bandanna (x 2, bandana,) “a tony girls’ school in Kent” (??? Tiny? Tory?) “in pigeon Spanish” (pidgin Spanish that would be,) “following the M 90 through the town of Kinross” (the M 90 bypasses Kinross, you have to make a small detour to go through the town,) crenulations (as a castle feature it’s spelt crenellations,) “a lunch of mulligatawny and cheese rolls” (I hope it was mulligatawny soup and cheese rolls; a filling of mulligatawny and cheese does not sound appetising,) “he invariably shined warmth on his characters” (shone warmth,) “chomping at the bit” (it’s champing.) Robbie Makgill (more likely McGill,) “‘We played hooky’” (supposedly said by a Scot. It’s not a phrase we use for truanting, ‘dogging it’, ‘bunking off’, or ‘plunking’, as it was called in my youth.)

Penguin Modern Classics, 1986, 282 p (including vi p Preface by André Maurois and ix p Introduction by James E Irby.) Edited by Donald A Yates and James E Irby. Translated variously from the Spanish in the publications Ficciones (1956,) El Aleph (1957,) Discusíon (1957,) Otras inquisiciones (1960) and El Hacedor (1960) by Donald A Yates, James E Irby, John M Fein, Harriet de Onis, Julian Palley, Dudley Fitts and Anthony Kerrigan. Preface translated by Sherry Mangan.

As well as the preface and introduction the book contains twenty three works described as FICTIONS, none of which is greater than sixteen pages long, along with ten ESSAYS, mostly short but the last and longest of which is seventeen pages, eight PARABLES, never more than two pages, and a one page Elegy which is laid out as a poem. In his introduction we are told Borges once claimed that “the basic devices of all fantastic literature are only four in number: the work within the work, the contamination of reality by dream, the voyage in time and the double.” All are displayed here among multiple invocations of circularity, of obverse and reverse, mirror images, separateness and wholeness and – a few times – an indication of the significance of fourteen instances of an object or concept. The pieces here show that Borges was formidably well read and he is never afraid to display that learning; indeed defiantly unapologetic about it to the extent that his trust of the reader requires no apology. The reading experience is not straightforward – Irby’s Introduction says the original Spanish texts do not flow smoothly and we should therefore not expect the English translations to do so – the text demands concentration.
FICTIONS:-
Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius is a tale about an elusive entry in the Encyclopædia Brittanica about the non-existent city of Uqbar and another relating to the orderly world of Tlön which has its own idiosyncratic language and philosophy.
The Garden of Forking Paths has a passage which illustrates the “many worlds” theory of quantum mechanics but prefaced it by decades. A man called Yu Tsun comes to an English estate where he finds the legacy of his ancestor Ts’ui Pên who withdrew from life to write a book and construct a labyrinth. The book is the labyrinth and the labyrinth is the book – the garden of forking paths. All this is wrapped up in a spy story, wherein Yu Tsun has to find a way to communicate his information through the fog of war to the German High Command of the Great War. It’s stunning.
The Lottery in Babylon is an account of how life in that city came to be dominated by chance as mediated through a Company which may or may not exist.
Pierre Menard, Author of the “Quixote” is a list of the written works of that author and an examination of his magnum opus the Quixote, a rewriting of Cervantes’s novel undertaken by immersing himself in seventeenth century Spanish and imagining himself as Cervantes. Nevertheless the story goes on to contend that even though the texts of the two books are identical Menard’s version is “almost infinitely richer.” The story also asserts that “there is no exercise of the intellect which is not, in the final analysis, useless.”
In The Circular Ruins a man crawls from a river onto land and then into a circular ruined temple where he sets out to dream a man. Eventually he succeeds but the story has more to come.
The Library of Babel is a complete universe made up of hexagonal galleries interconnected by passageways. Its uniformly formatted volumes contain every possible combination of twenty-five orthographical symbols; 22 letters, the comma, the space and the full stop.
Funes the Memorious was a man from Fray Bentos who could remember everything, but was unfortunately an invalid.
The Shape of the Sword is apparently a tale related to Borges by the “Englishman from La Colorada” (who was actually Irish) and concerns how he got his facial scar during the Irish Civil War.
Theme of the Traitor and the Hero is reported rather than told. It is a schematic outline of a story about a revolutionary hero who is in fact a traitor to the cause but whose unmasking would do damage to it.
Death and the Compass is a crime story revolving around revenge, geometry and the Tetragrammaton.
The Secret Miracle tells of the bargain which writer Jaromir Hladik makes with God the day before his execution by the Nazis to allow him to finish his play The Enemies.
Three Versions of Judas elaborates on the theories of one Nils Runeberg regarding Judas Iscariot as being a reflection of Jesus; theories excoriated by orthodox theologians but then revised to being a reflection of God.
The Sect of the Phoenix is a description of one of those secret societies which are so secret – and universal – even its members don’t know they belong to it.
In The Immortal a man hears of the city of the Immortals; both it and immortality itself said to be reached by drinking the waters of a certain river. Somewhere beyond the bounds of Africa he finds the city, a labyrinthine oddity built on the ruins of the one of the ancient Immortals. There he meets a thousand year-old Homer but yearns again for mortality.
The Theologians contrasts the wheel and the cross, the straight path of Jesus against the circular labyrinth followed by the impious, the Histriones and the thoughts of John of Pannonia.
Story of the Warrior and the Captive draws parallels between the story of Droctulft, a barbarian who died defending Rome, and an Englishwoman abducted by South American Indians who had come to accept what Borges calls “a savage life.” The story contains the wonderful phrase “that reluctant blue the English call grey.”
Emma Zunz is the tale of the elaborate revenge of the woman of that name on the man who committed the crime for which her father was exiled.
The House of Asterion is another labyrinth, with all of its parts repeated many times.
Deutsches Requiem is a courageous act of literary ventriloquism in the form of an apologia pro vita sua of a German from a distinguished military family as written the night before his execution for crimes committed as subdirector of Tarnowitz concentration camp. He is proud of his Nazi philosophy, proud of his anti-Judaic (and therefore anti-Jesus) beliefs, proud of destroying the Bible for ever, proud of forcing the Allies into, in order to win, being the Nazis’ image.
Averroes’s Search relates to his difficulty in fathoming Aristotle’s use of the words tragedy and comedy as these did not exist in Arabic. An addendum outlines Borges’s own difficulty in comprehending Averroes.
The Zahir relates the thoughts of the narrator (Borges mentions himself in this context, but these fabular tales are never so straightforward) about the relatively small denomination coin of that name – note obverses and reverses again – he picked up in change and how he could not stop thinking about it. It carries on to description of the effects of other similarly mesmerisingly fascinating objects and whether they are thereby close to God.
In The Waiting a man takes on the identity of his enemy, Alejandro Villari, as a means to avoiding his revenge. Every night he dreams that Villari comes to kill him.
The God’s Script contains the thoughts of an Aztec priest tortured and imprisoned by the Spanish. He sees God as a wheel encompassing everything that was, is, or will be, all things interlinked – including his torturer.

ESSAYS:-
Here Borges considers The Argentine Writer and Tradition and decries calls for such writers to stick to only Argentine themes as these would be less Argentine for it; the Chinese Emperor Shih Huang Ti who built the Great Wall but also ordered all books published prior to his reign be burned so that history would start with him; the history of cosmogony as manifested in the infinite spheres; how Don Quixote is magical precisely for its realistic treatment of the world; Paul Valéry as the symbol of the perfect poet; how each writer creates his (or her, but Borges did not include ‘her’) own precursors by modifying the past and the future; the many ways of illustrating Zeno’s paradox; how attempts to understand the world are undermined by lack of self-knowledge; that Bernard Shaw’s later works educe almost innumerable persons or dramatis personae; and produces A New Refutation of Time a title which, as Borges notes, contains its own contradiction.

The PARABLES are of a piece with the Fictions and the Essays, finely wrought but compressed into at most one and a half pages.

Pedant’s corner:- In the Introduction; “Perhaps the most striking characteristics of his writings is their” (either ‘characteristic’, or, ‘are’,) snobbism (what is wrong with the word snobbery?) Otherwise; a missing full stop (x2,) Cervantes’ (x 2, Cervantes’s – used in this form later, twice,) dilacerated (not misshapen teeth. The surrounding text argues for ‘lacerated’,) gradins (gradines,) demiurgi (x2, demiurges,) eucalypti (x3, eucalyptuses,) connexion (connection,) the text could be read as implying that “the armoured vanguard of the Third Reich” first entered Prague in March 1943 (they actually invaded in late 1938,) “military tribute of one of Rome’s legions” (tribune,) Histriones’ (Histriones’s,) strategem (stratagem,) Guzerat (normally ‘Gujarat’ in English.) “Nor is it banal to pretend that the most traditional of races renounce the memory of its past” (renounces,) hexametres (hexameters,) Scopenhauer (Schopenhauer.)

faber and faber, 2013, 504 p. Translated from the Spanish El sueño del celta by Edith Grossman.

On the face of it this seems an unlikely endeavour. A Peruvian novelist focusing on a relatively obscure incident in British – and Irish – history? (Then again the Peruvian Jorge Luis Borges was fascinated by Scotland.) But this novelist’s protagonist, (Sir) Roger Casement, was instrumental in exposing the barbarous practices of colonial exploitation in the Congo and later the Amazon, wherein he made his name and for which he received his title, before he took up the cause of Irish independence and was subsequently arrested for treason after visiting Germany during the Great War to seek its government’s help in that endeavour.

The odd numbered chapters here focus on Casement’s life in prison after his trial, in the run-up to his execution. These are the most novelistic parts of the book, displaying his relationship with the guards and the visitors who come to see him, outlining their efforts to obtain a commutation of his death sentence. The even numbered chapters tend to be longer and cover his career in the years leading up to his arrest – and often read more like a history book than a novel. Llosa discounts a large portion of Casement’s diary entries (which many contend were forged by his captors) relating to his homosexual encounters with various men – which damned him not only in the authorities’ eyes, but more crucially in those of the public – as imagined or else wish fulfilment fantasies, giving a novelistic alternative account of several of these incidents, though he treats others as veracious. As Casement’s priest says to him about the suggestion the stories about him were put in the newspapers to counteract the petition for clemency, ‘Nothing can be excluded in the world of politics. It’s not the cleanest of human activities.’ Yes, indeed.

In what is perhaps a comment on the motives of campaigners, a consul in S America tells Casement, “‘I don’t have much admiration for martyrs, Mr Casement. Or for heroes. People who sacrifice themselves for truth or justice often do more harm than the thing they want to change.’”

It is in the ‘historical’ (in the sense of predating the events in the odd numbered chapters) sections though that it is set out how Casement’s experiences in the Congo and the Amazon led him to the idea that Ireland too was a colonised country, albeit with its inhabitants now less harshly treated.

Despite Casement’s conclusion in South America that, We should not permit colonisation to castrate the spirit of the Irish as it has castrated the spirit of the Amazon Indians. We must act now, once and for all, before it is too late and we turn into automata, Llosa also suggests Casement’s trip to Ireland on a U-boat was to try to forestall the Easter Rising rather than encourage it, or even to bring it weapons, as it would not be supported by German action to neutralise the British Army and Royal Navy. When Joseph Plunkett tells him in Germany the Rising is imminent Casement thinks, “No matter how heroic and intrepid they were, the revolutionaries would be crushed by the machinery of the Empire. It would use the opportunity to carry out an implacable purge. The liberation of Ireland would be delayed for another fifty years.”

Plunkett’s response is that, “‘of course we’re going to lose this battle. It’s a question of enduring. Of resisting. For days, weeks. And dying in such a way that our death and our blood will increase the patriotism of the Irish until it becomes an irresistible force.’” Which it did.

The novel’s title The Dream of the Celt comes from that of a poem Casement wrote in 1906 about Ireland’s mythic past. While as a novel it is a little unbalanced and not, perhaps, Llosa at his best, it does act as a useful primer on Casement’s life and times.

Pedant’s corner:- sheriff (illustrates the drawbacks of translation into USian. There are no sheriffs in British prisons. We have prison officers or, at a push, warders. And it wasn’t the prison Governor, since he appears later in the book.) “In Brixton Prison” (in the context of an earlier mention of Pentonville a British translator would just write ‘In Brixton’ here,) “Dr Livingstone, who never wanted to leave African soil or return to England” (return to the UK? Livingstone was Scottish after all.) “The Irish historian ……. she had been” (even though there are 34 words in between ‘historian’ and ‘she’ that ‘she’ is not needed,) “gave Walla a week to fulfil their quota” (its quota,) “where a formation of African soldiers were marching” (a formation … was marching.) “There were also a good number of” (There was also a good number,) “Perhaps one, some of his colleagues” (one, or some, of his colleagues?) “with the Irish insignia on their visors” (I suspect this refers to cap badges. These do not sit on visors,) Casement refers to the British Army as “the most powerful army in the world” (in 1916 the British Army wasn’t. The German one still was,) “the Court of Appeals” (it’s the Court of Appeal.)

The two remaining candidates to be the leader of the Conservative Party and hence the next Prime Minister of the UK show just how the calibre of the country’s politicians – along with the standards of its politics – has fallen.

The choice lies between a blustering buffoon and a piece of rhyming slang.

My comment on the present incumbent when she triggered Article 50 has come true in spades. These are dangerous men.

The buffoon showed himself to be totally unfit for high office in his time as Foreign Secretary when his failure to master any detail of her case led to Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe being all but confirmed in the eyes of Iran as being in effect a spy, or, at least, working against its government.

The rhyming slang, when Secretary of State for Health, was so inept in the post he managed to unite the almost the entire medical profession against him. And have you seen his eyes?

If either of these two is the answer, what on Earth is the question?

On a related point I’ve seen it suggested that if the buffoon does become PM then it is possible he may appoint T Ronald Dump’s pal (well he likes to think T Ronald is his pal) Nigel Farage as UK ambassador to the US.

Great. Just do it Boris. At least it will get Farage and his poisonous rantings out of this country for a while.

Apparently Jorge Luis Borges characterised the War of Thatcher’s Face as a fight between two bald men over a comb.

The contest between Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson and Jeremy Richard Streynsham Hunt (don’t their full names just tell you all you need to know about them?) is more like two blind men scrabbling over a hearing aid. Neither can or will do much good with it once they’ve got it.

British Library, 2016, 254 p (including 2 p Preface by Adam Roberts, 3 p Introduction by Roger Luckhurst, 2 p Notes on Contributors, 1 p Picture Credits and 18 p Index.

Adam Roberts’s Preface notes SF’s relative ubiquity in today’s world and praises this book as as compact and exhaustive an introduction to the subject as you will find. Roger Luckhurst’s Introduction, by way of reference to Jorge Luis Borges’s short story The Garden of Forking Paths (which presaged many-worlds theory by a considerable time,) acknowledges the impossibility of summing up SF in such a short space as a single book but hopes it will provide pointers to newcomers to the genre and to old hands alike.

The overall approach is more or less chronological. Chapter 1¹ sees Arthur B Evans tackle early forms of SF in The Beginnings. Roger Luckhurst himself covers the transition From Scientific Romance to Science Fiction in Chapter 2. The Utopian Prospects of 1900-49 are considered by Caroline Edwards in Chapter 3². There is some overlap in time here with Mark Bould’s Chapter 4³, Pulp SF and its Others, 1918-39. Malisa Kurtz examines immediate post-war SF in Chapter 5⁴, After the War. Chapter 6⁵ has Rob Latham look at The New Wave ‘Revolution’. Chapter 7’s voyage From the New Wave into the Twenty-First Century⁶ is undertaken by Sherryl Vint. Gerry Canavan brings us up to date with Chapter 8, New Paradigms, After 2001. Each Chapter is repletely referenced and has a list of “What to Read Next” at its end. Imagine my satisfaction when finding I had read most – if not all – of the relevant recommendations. Plus I am in the process of ticking off another right now.

Perhaps the most interesting part (because the most remote) was Chapter 1 wherein Evans identifies many instances of SF or proto-SF from before 1900 and exemplifies two of its fundamental attributes at that time; diversion (imagination) and didacticism (cognition) – or, as Jules Verne’s editor/publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel put it, instruction that entertains and entertainment that instructs. Well before the twentieth century subterranean or interplanetary adventure became well established – along with time travel – and u- and dystopias have always abounded. It is noted that early interplanetary spaces were modelled on colonial spaces – Space Opera and Star Wars your origins lie here. Indeed the colonial adventure (King Solomon’s Mines etc) can be considered as SF. Examples of the genre emanating from outwith the anglo- or francophone spheres are given due note, including SF works from pre-revolutionary Russia, Africa, Asia, Latin America – and also by black US writers – of which I was not previously aware.

The New Wave chapter laments that “unique talents” such as R A Lafferty, D G Compton, David R Bunch and Edgar Pangborn are little read these days. In one of those omissions Luckhurst acknowledged would occur discussion of one of my favourites from the time, Richard Cowper, is absent.

For anyone wishing to acquaint themselves with the genre this is an admirable place to start. It also provides potential new avenues for aficionados to pursue.

Pedant’s corner:- ¹“by adding this own critical observations” (his own,) “the series of six novels … are set” (the series is set.) “But all is not perfect.” (But not all is perfect,) Cerillas’ (Cerillas’s.) ²“Has strengthened African-American will and prepared them for an international liberation movement” (“them” is the wrong pronoun here but to avoid it the whole sentence needs recasting.) “An imperial cabal of … plot to undermine the ..” (a cabal plots.) “As the new intake are given” (the new intake is given,.) “Slovakia’s defence strategy, and the novel’s SF element, employs the technique of…” (notwithstanding the parenthetical commas that “and” requires a plural noun; so, employ the technique.) ³“a series of coups weaken the fascist grip” (a series weakens the grip.) “The expedition… encounter” (the expedition encounters.) ⁴”from embracing the ‘the divine right of machines’” (omit the “the” before the quote,) “as the scientific elite have developed…” (the scientific elite has developed,) “the dark side of the Moon” (every side of the Moon is dark, for 14 days out of 28; I believe the “far side” was intended.) ⁵fit (fitted,) New Worlds’ (New Worlds’s.) ⁶ascendency (ascendancy,) a missing full stop, “between this world and the our present” (either “our” or “the”, not both,) “thus rejected earlier version of speculative genres” (versions of,) “it was posed to become” (poised to become.)

The Mercat Press, 1986, 288p

The House With The Green Shutters has an important place in Scottish literature as when it was originally published in 1901 it represented a break from the sentimentality of the Kailyard School and prefigured the work of Hugh MacDiarmid and Lewis Grassic Gibbon, among others. A warning, though. The book does contain a wheen of Scots words and phrases which may be a barrier to the more general reader.

The eponymous house, an imposing edifice in the town of Barbie, has been built by John Gourlay to reflect his position in the life of the town where he has a monopoly as a carrier. Gourlay has a “€œguid conceit of himself,”€ as we Scots say, and throws his weight about both metaphorically and – as he has a shortish temper – at times literally. His son, also called John, expects to inherit the carriage business and has neither the motivation nor aptitude to shine at school.

All begins to change with the return to Barbie from a sojourn in Aberdeen of James Wilson, whom Gourlay, in true Scottish fashion, at first dismisses due to his origins, (the, “Ah kent his faither,” reflex – see under ‘ken.’) Wilson soon sets himself up as a rival carrier. The opportunity the coming of the railway presents to Wilson gives him the lever to outwit Gourlay and precipitate a slow spiral of descent. Gourlay’€™s determination to outdo Wilson in everything leads him to send his son to University in Edinburgh where his character faults become magnified.

Throughout the book the author illuminates many aspects of the Scottish character as well as more general traits. The “€œbodies” – perhaps “sweetie wives” would be a more modern description – who gossip and scheme on street corners are especially well depicted. However, as perhaps reflects the times in which the book is set, the women characters are little more than cyphers.

The novel is apparently the first book in the English (sic) language read by Jorge Luis Borges (see under ‘criticism’) who thereafter, “€œwanted to be Scotch.”€ Bizarre.