days and nights with Jorge Luis
Jorge Luis Borges was no doubt a great writer, one of those who never got a Nobel Prize, but captivated intellectuals all over the world because he asked the right questions and came up with mysterious non-answers which make you think for yourself. Kabbalistic, Islamic, Gnostic, Buddhist and other systems of knowledge intrigued him. You can bet that there were no ordinary evenings with J L Borges. Literature was Life, and all those 'evenings', over many years, circumnabulated around the written word.
There is a problem. I seldom, if ever, read books like this because I don't like adulation, which I believe should be reserved for God and God alone. We all have our foibles, our little habits, and our shortcomings---whether we are literary honchos or writers of Goodreads reviews ! Willis Barnstone, a prominent American poet with wide international experience, writes the best one (of the few such books) I ever read because he at least keeps the adulation down to a dull roar. Argentina in the days of the Dirty War, academic occasions, the Great Writer's comments and witticisms about many subjects, his intimate thoughts----these may interest you or not. Are you a person who would like to (or be able to) spend an entire plane flight discussing Milton and Dante ? If the answer is `yes', you will definitely like this book. I found it alternately interesting and as our Australian friends say, "airy-fairy". It is a delicate subject, well-handled, but it does have its drawbacks. In the end, this IS a case of a man's taking advantage of his acquaintance with a world figure to write a book. The Queen's butler, Mao's doctor, or a dictator's cook might or might not do the same, the main difference being that they wouldn't do it so well and their subject might be less well-read, to say the least. I enjoyed Barnstone's personal experiences of Argentina very much. These, woven into the intense scrutiny of Borges, make the book come alive.