Wednesday, September 11

Borges is over for dinner.

He says, "I need to get your advice on something." He's brought a book, Cuentos breves y maravillosos, written by a Salvadoran, Menen Desleal, and a letter, written by someone else, a Guatemalan I gather, who had sent him the book. The title, obviously, calls to mind that of our anthology, Cuentos breves y extraordinarios. As a sort of introduction, the book has a letter from Borges, who praises the stories contained within. The letter is without doubt apocryphal: a sort of patchwork of sentences and phrases of Borges. Borges remarks: "It's unlikely Mother would have answered a letter for me without telling me." We soon reject that hypothesis altogether: the letter is too long, and his mother would not have written such a long letter; and he himself, never.  Moreover, she would not have imitated his style.  As to the phrase, grandes barbas rizadas, Borges is sure he has never written that.

We read a few of the stories. One, entitled "Los cerdos", is amusing. When the village miller reads some manuscripts he found in his mill, he is turned into a pig. Then his wife reads them, and she too is turned into a pig. The same fate befalls the children, the village priest, and so on. Towards the end of the story some students from some unnamed university observe the mill from a safe distance.

The book has a postface in which the author begs Borges to forgive him for the apocryphal letter. The Guatemalan who sent the letter says that, although he grants that the author writes of the authentic customs of San Salvador and even all of Central America, he wishes to call attention to the plagiary. The apocryphal letter probably earned the author a second place in the National Prize for Literature.

Borges doesn't quite know what to do. He thinks the author of the book is more intelligent than the one writing him. However, the one writing him has a point, because if the apocryphal letter was meant to be a joke, the author should not have made it work in his favor: the effusive praise for his stories invalidates its character as a disinterested work. I tell him, "You can't put yourself at odds with a poor individual, bright enough, who has backed himself into a corner such that he lacks the freedom and opportunity to write in any way other than how he imagines you to write."

He decides to answer, at last, without giving any greater importance to the matter. He even praises the book and the apocryphal letter.