Collected Fictions

By: Jorge Luis Borges / Translated By: Andrew Hurley / Narrated By: George Guidall

Length: 5 hrs and 14 mins

CERTAINLY it’s the translation! It CAN’T be that Borges is full of himself?!?

If I had to hear the word “labyrinth” one more time, I woulda screamed. And perhaps that’s Andrew Hurley as a translator in choosing the word? Over. And over. AND OVER?!? Then too, there’s the fact that these stories in Collected Fictions start vaguely and go nowhere pretty darned quickly. They go round and round, over and under, up and down, always winding up at no point wherever.

This was a book our audiobook club listened to, and we all had to admit it: George Guidall does a fine job; Borges? Not so much…

My sister loved the story about the library and the universe; I liked the story about the dueling knives; my mom was just disappointed that Borges insisted on being so literary even as he slammed literary writing.

Add to that, we chose this book based upon the summation the professor for our audiobook choice, Death, Dying, and the Afterlife, a Great Courses book, made about the Borges story, “The Immortal”. He weaved it together so that there was a great story, filled with shocking and profound realizations. Really, it was fascinating the way he conveyed it.

But the actual story as Borges writes it? >MEH<

He relies too heavily on words, words, and more words, with little emotional depth, a skimming of character, a story that winds up coming off as shallow. It was very, very much a letdown.

To be sure, some of the stories are interesting, but really, even then, they aren’t very captivating.

My husband says ya gotta take it all in context of the time they were written. That they were groundbreaking for the era. Hmm… Maaaaaaybe?

But all in all, I gotta tell ya. Guidall’s narration is the only color added to the collection as a whole.

>MEH<

(I know, I know. I’m going to hell for not liking Borges!)