On Paths Unknown discussion

The third of the stories that was joint third in the poll, and as with the others, assume the discussion will include spoilers.

Overview

This story of espionage, set during the first world war, demonstrates that paths don’t always fork in a literal, concrete sense. It was published in 1941.

You can read it here:
http://wsblog.iash.unibe.ch/wp-conten...
or another translation here:
http://mycours.es/gamedesign2012/file...

Possible Discussion Points

• Race: there are some strong opinions, explicit and implicit, about Chinese people and their culture.

• Yu Tsun’s method of sending a secret message is… extraordinary. It certainly made for a surprising ending.

• Wartime loyalties: the two main protagonists are involved in war, supporting a country that is not their own.

• If paths fork, presumably there are other endings to this story.

• Hypertext: this story, published in 1941, illustrates the concept, but I expect there are quite a few people here who remember when hypertext was a new and exciting thing – perhaps around the 1980s. JLB didn’t write sci-fi, but he was remarkably prescient in some matters.

Hmm, would you say this is one of his most realistic and exciting stories, with an almost thriller flavor to it? ...or is that just me?

In any case, to me, Borges seems very occupied with the idea of parallel universes and all possibilities.

To me there is a lot of reworking in this story of some of the ideas from Library of Babel.

I don't know if any of you are familiar with those "game" books, where it starts off with a narrative, and then gives the reader a choice - if you choose A, then you have to skip to, say page 6 for the outcome of that choice, and if you choose B, you have to skip to page 10 for the outcome of choice B, and so forth.

Like these: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choose_...

Hmm, and this might also be of interest: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Types_o...

Cecily wrote: "You can read it here:
http://wsblog.iash.unibe.ch/wp-conten...

or another translation here:
http://mycours.es/gamedesign2012/file...
.."

Hmm, out of those 2 translations, I found the second one a lot more natural and pleasant to read. :)

Cecily, you spoke of assumptions about the Chinese, and I do know that one of the stereotypes about Chinese people is that culturally speaking, they can be a bit pompous in the sense of leaning towards being ceremonious and indulging in pomp and circumstance, oh, and there's that famous burocracy as well, of course.

...so I was wondering if the stiff and unnatural way the narrator speaks in the first translation was perhaps to consciously or unconsciously strengthen this sort of stereotypical idea of the Chinese?

Certainly the idea that a Chinese scholar would invent an infinite maze would seem to me to fit in with that...

Traveller wrote: "Hmm, would you say this is one of his most realistic and exciting stories, with an almost thriller flavor to it? ...or is that just me?"

Only a bit: it seems that way at first (though the Chinese aspect lends an air of exoticism), but the nature of the ending is rather more abstract.

Most of the stories in his first collection, A Universal History of Iniquity are far more realistic (and based on legends of real people). Later, Emma Zunz is another thriller/mystery that's pretty realistic. There's also a story of knife-fighters called The End (published in Artifices), The Wait (published in The Aleph) that was “suggested by a true police story”, a weird scam in The Mountebank, along with a few others published in Dreamtigers.

Traveller wrote: "In any case, to me, Borges seems very occupied with the idea of parallel universes and all possibilities.

To me there is a lot of reworking in this story of some of the ideas from Library of Babel.

I don't know if any of you are familiar with those "game" books..."

Yes, I remember those. They had novelty value, but the overall story and writing tended to disappoint after a while.

With some of these recurring, connected themes, it's hard to know where best to discuss them.

Traveller wrote: "Hmm, out of those 2 translations, I found the second one a lot more natural and pleasant to read.
Cecily, you spoke of assumptions about the Chinese"

Yes, I agree with what you say. I hope no one finds the story offensive, but the story addresses it too:

"I did it because I sensed that the Chief somehow feared
people of my race--for the innumerable ancestors who merge within me."
or, in the second translation,
"I carried out my plan because I felt the Chief had some fear of those of my race, of
those uncountable forebears whose culmination lies in me."

In that instance, I prefer the first, precisely because it is slightly less natural. ;)

Cecily wrote: ""I did it because I sensed that the Chief somehow feared
people of my race--for the innumerable ancestors who merge within me."
or, in the second translation,
"I carried out my plan because I felt the Chief had some fear of those of my race, of
those uncountable forebears whose culmination lies in me."

I've been chewing on this story and mulling it over, because I simply cannot decide how I feel about the ending. There is something I want to say about it, something I feel about it, that I just can't put my finger on.

One thing that I found rather cool, is how Borges indeed makes alternate suggestions for the events in the short story - for example, Dr Albert suggests that the protagonist could, in separate forks in time, have come to his house as either a friend or an enemy - and the irony is that Yu Tsun actually went there as both a friend and an enemy. A friend because of the work Albert had done on his ancestor's creation, but an enemy because of him being a spy for the Germans, and then of course - that ending...

I did feel that Borges could have inserted more forking moments into the story, though - for example that kind of thing was very well done in a film called Sliding Doors

Traveller wrote: "I did feel that Borges could have inserted more forking moments into the story..."

Isn't that our job, as his readers?

Well, I'd say an author can hint, but perhaps he did and I missed it!