While I’m likely to do a Finale on this anthology, a thought struck me after writing up that last post.
Borges is what I had considered a "namedropper" in these stories and there are so many mentioned, as well as places, that it irks me a bit to not quite know what is real and what is not. I’m a fanatic on knowing the difference and this bothers me in all areas of life but Borges is truly being a prick about sliding one into the other (BTW, I mean he’s pricking my consciousness–totally allowable reference then, no?). By placing his own name within one of the stories I think I’m safe in any definition of the previous statement.
With the concentration required in reading Borges, I’m too lazy to research each name and place to see exactly where the line is drawn. So I breeze along through the book, determined to overlook this peccadillo of Borges, and it hits me: The whole purpose to Borges’ labyrinth, his melding of time and space is to eliminate that border between that which we call real and that which we cannot. Fiction and memory to Borges, may be the same.
And who am I to say it is not? This is truly an idea that is going to haunt me further in my efforts to understand my world.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology