i had an astonishingly good conversation last night (with people whose twitter handles i sadly don’t know) about borges - someone mentioned after he read borges it became so clear how many later writers were imitating or riffing off of stuff he did better
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i mentioned feeling similar about olaf stapledon. c.s. lewis and tolkien are in this category too. and it’s quite striking how all of them were specifically working during the post-WWI (stapledon) or post-WWII (for the others) eras
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makes me want to devour everything that borges has ever written, apparently i’m missing a lot of good stuff. would love to use him more consciously as an inspiration for my own writing
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i avoided borges for many years for roughly the same reason i avoided jung: a sense that i would glom onto them and make them my whole personality lol. but i think this is the year for me too
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i’m even just going through my vague memories of reading borges stories and being like “goddamn this guy was onto some real shit,” haven’t revisited some of them in years
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I've read Borges Ficciones, and wonderful as they were, I think Zachary Mason has actually managed to improve upon his style in his Metamorphica. Highly recommended.
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Same with Ted Chiang and the Golem, I think Chiang is better but Borges was first.
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