Short stories are great, I like them more than I do novels; they’re much quicker to read and the good ones accomplish what a longer novel would have anyway. Jorge Luis Borges’ collection in Ficciones is one of the best I’ve seen because he believes in the effect of short stories (except he uses long and complex words like tautological and pusillanimous). He followed through on the theory that great ideas, stories, and insights can be presented, considered, and completed in just a few pages.
The stories are all guaranteed to make you think—probably in ways you haven’t before—about things that are new to you. He is a master of fantasy, of imagination, of irony and humor; from one story to the next, from one page to the next, from one line to the next, he may throw anything at you. If you take your time with each story, absorbing the secrets he placed within them, the worlds he invents will stand out in your memory for some time to come.
Fortunately for the reader, every one of these 17 short stories deserves some 500 words for itself, but unfortunately for these stories’ well-deserved attention, I have to generalize quickly over the ones which most caught my interest.
In “The Garden of Forking Paths,” a double agent working for the Germans in World War I—not out of duty for that “barbarous country,” but to prove to a captain fearful of Asian men that a “yellow man can save his armies,”—needs to reveal to the Germans the next British attack. The ending is comedic, ironic, and clever, and goes to show with just how much mastery Borges can weld a story.
There are multiple ways to read all of the stories. “The Sect of the Phoenix” is really just a riddle. What is the rite of entrance into this societal cult written about? The answer is in there; don’t finish it thinking Borges was just blasting conjecture.
“The Library of Babel” introduces an infinite library where every shelf holds books 400 pages long. In these books, every single permutation of every orthographic symbol is found, meaning all literature is finished. The stories of all men and all things, and the false stories of all men and all things, are in this library, and Borges tells the story of the library and what would follow from having it.
In “The Secret Miracle,” a Jewish playwright during the Holocaust who had not seen much success with his previous works, wants to finish his play The Enemies. However, he was accused, sent to a concentration camp and sentenced to death by firing squad. The night before it happens, he makes a prayer to God: “If I exist at all, if I am not one of Your repetitions and errata, I exist as the author of The Enemies. In order to bring this drama, to justify me, to justify You, I need one more year.” After a meaningful dream, he awakes, stands in front of the wall, and notices that the bead of water running down his face has stopped, time stands still, and he has his one year to complete his drama inside his head, which he does, not for his posterity but entirely for himself, out of love and necessity for art and creation.
Borges’ Ficciones is a collection worthy of many hours; the thoughts and ideas he spouts reveal to the reader that Borges was one of the most insightful writers that ever lived.
