
Borges and Me
An Encounter
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Narrated by:
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Fred Sanders
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By:
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Jay Parini
About this listen
In this evocative work of what the author in his afterword calls “a kind of novelistic memoir”, Jay Parini takes us back 50 years, when he fled the United States for Scotland - in flight from the Vietnam War and desperately in search of his adult life. There, through unlikely circumstances, he meets the famed Argentinian author Jorge Luis Borges.
Borges - visiting his translator in Scotland - is in his 70s, blind and frail. When Borges hears that Parini owns a 1957 Morris Minor, he declares a long-held wish to visit the Highlands, where he hopes to meet a man in Inverness who is interested in Anglo-Saxon riddles. As they travel, stopping at various sites of historical interest, the charmingly garrulous Borges takes Parini on a grand tour of Western literature and ideas, while promising to teach him about love and poetry. As Borges’s idiosyncratic world of labyrinths, mirrors, and doubles shimmers into being, their escapades take a surreal turn.
Borges and Me is a classic road novel, based on true events. It’s also a magical mystery tour of an era, like our own, in which uncertainties abound, and when - as ever - it’s the young and the old who hear voices and dream dreams.
©2020 Jay Parini (P)2020 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
“This reminiscence by Parini, who is now a prolific novelist, biographer and poet, brings Borges more sharply to life than any account I’ve read or heard.... In this sense, the memoir is an important contribution to the biography of a major writer.... For readers who already admire Borges, this memoir will be a delicious treat. For those who have yet to read him, Parini provides the perfect entry point to a writer who altered the way many think of literature.” (Michael Greenberg, The New York Times Book Review)
"A classic comic-philosophical road story, playfully conscious of its own traditions.... Many of the book’s loveliest passages are pure geography; as he drives, Jay describes to Borges the passing landscapes of Scotland, to which Borges adds literary and historical context. The pressure to capture Scotland in words for the great Jorge Luis Borges forces Jay to think about language in a new way, to 'up his game' as a poet, and this artistic journey, occurring alongside their physical journey, becomes the book’s emotional backbone.... A fun, tightly crafted, tenderhearted literary adventure, an improbable tale that, like many improbable tales, happens to be true." (Martin Riker, The Wall Street Journal)
"Borges and Me is a road trip book like no other, written by someone who certainly didn't spend his youth the way I did. I loved every minute of reading it. It's full of wonderful energy and humor, with underpinnings of sadness and seriousness I can't shake." (Ann Beattie)
Caution: Genius ahead
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Georgie
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Moving, transformative
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A road trip I didn’t want to end!
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exceptional!
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Unexpected
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Heavier on the “Me” than the “Borges”
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A Gift
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I loved it
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The whimsical
Atmosphere, the choice of divine choice of words, the Scottish accent & highland background drew me into this human adventure of age and youth, knowing and subtlety …so sweet I found this unique gem of a story
Delightful & wise it takes you elsewhere for a few hours and brings you back with a smile,hoping you’ll
Find another story like it some day
Borges - a delight
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