Welcome to Litsy!

I enjoy some non fiction all year, but towards the end of October as I begin thinking about November‘s #bookspin list I start getting excited for #NonFictionNovember. I don‘t know how it got started, but I love spending a month focused on nonfiction. Here are a few titles I might read.

Will you participate? Any books you‘re looking forward to?

I started Non-Fictions in March, and finished it now! It's been a fabulous companion, and even if I haven't always grasped Borges meaning, it was never uninteresting. The wide range of his reading and his erudition are well-known, but he always wears them lightly, never seeking to dazzle or impress, rather to share and impart the pleasure he found in literary worlds. Marc Bolan has a lyric which seems to fit:
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“There is nothing more characteristic of a country than its imaginations."

- Prologue to "The Tiger Guest", P'u Sung-ling

"A book of genius is a book that can be read in a slightly or very different way by each generation."

- The Enigma of Shakespeare

"In England there is a popular superstition that we do not know we are dead until we realise that we have no reflection in the mirror."

I'm not sure why this commonplace belief, repeated in a thousand ghost stories and films, should have given me goosebumps as I read it, but it did! ??

"When a country has a strong spirit, foreign and exotic influences do not debilitated that spirit, they strengthen it."

- German Literature in the Age of Bach

"The true name of Rome was also secret; in the Last days of the Republic, Quintus Valerius Sorano committed the sacrilege of revealing it, & was executed."
- A History of the Echo of a Name

We don't know the actual name of Rome! ? Going down an internet rabbit hole, there are speculations but the True Name of the centre of Empire was successfully concealed so that its enemies could not use the supposed magical power of names to capture the city.

"We might say that without the evenings and nights of Buenos Aires a tango cannot be made, and that in heaven there awaits us Argentines the Platonic idea of the tango."
- A History of the Tango
One of the pleasures of autumn and winter is Strictly Come Dancing, so Borges short, idiosyncratic History of the Tango is a timely read. I love the good nature and joy of the show. I do miss Flavia & Vincent, though: I hope they do a guest spot this year.

“Science is a finite sphere that grows in infinite space; each new expansion makes it include a larger zone of the unknown, but the unknown is inexhaustable.”

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In an essay with the wonderfully evocative title, On the Cult of Books (is that Lovecraftianesquely Borgesian, or the other way around? 🤔), Borges refers to a belief that in the 4th century CE St. Ambrose of Milan was the first person noted in Western literature to read silently to themself. A quick check on the internet scotches that as a myth (Euripides has characters silently reading in his plays), though I still like the idea of a single👇🏼

“Burning books and erecting fortifications are the usual occupations of princes."

- The Wall and the Books

"Each moment we live exists, not the imaginary combination of these moments."

- A New Refutation of Time

“Night is pleasing to us because, like memory, it erases idle details."

- A New Refutation of Time

“In art, nothing is more secondary than the author's intentions.”

“One of the habits of the mind is the invention of horrible imaginings."

- The Total Library

"I swear never to involve myself again [in conversation with Nazi sympathisers], for the time granted to mortals is not infinite and the fruits of these discussions is vain."

- Definition of a Germanophile, 1940

By page 75, the younger Borges of the previous essays has matured, and instead of trying to prove he's clever, is sharing his wit, erudition and intelligence. A much warmer and companionly read 🤗📖🧡

"There are no more readers left, only potential literary critics."

- The Superstitious Ethics of the Reader, 1931

"If only some eternal book existed, primed for our enjoyment and whims, no less inventive in the populous morning than the secluded night, oriented toward all hours of the world. Your favourite books, reader, are like rough drafts of that book without a final reading."

- Literary Pleasure

Because having eight books on the go is apparently insufficient for my flibbertigibbet reading brain at the moment, I've started a ninth.
While it is a chunky monkey at over 500 pages, it has the Borgesian advantage of being very short chapters on diverse subjects, so it's easy to dip into, demanding some attention, but not exhaustingly so.

"Memory is no more than the noun by which we imply that among the innumerable possible states of consciousness, many occur again in an imprecise way."

- The Nothingness of Personality

"Many futile hours cluster in remembrance around one hour in which there was love."

- The Nothingness of Personality

I love the magazine - but perhaps even better are the small zine / novella sized non fiction essays from the very wonderful folks at https://www.creativenonfiction.org. They‘re perfect for one sitting reading. #nfn2020

Every time I read this book, this is my third one, I'd discovered a new vision about it. At this time, I discovered a Borges more focused in analyze the humanity of his favorite authors. For example: in Herman Melville, Bartleby the Scrivener. In which he compares the Melville's writing with Kafka, or some others. The way that Borges write is the perfect suit for his philosophy of life.