Labyrinths

This set of short stories by Jorge Luis Borges is simply amazing. Again, one of those writers that you hear lauded wherever you go, but are strangely difficult to find in the bookshop. I had to get this from the internet.

Most stories people write are based on psychology; his, on philosophy. Every story is constructed to examine, illustrate, play with an idea. He takes an idea, follows where it would logically go, and then takes it further, to conclusions that no one else would reach. It's speculative fiction, a kind of absurd which sometimes is near horror, just because it's distant from everyday but somehow close.

He's got an entire world invented by a group of thinkers which somehow becomes realer than our world. He's got a language which lacks nouns, so that "the moon rose over the river" becomes "beyond the upstreaming it mooned". He's got a guy who invents a word for every number (I have so thought of that system before!) He's got such a variety of human beings, Christian, Islamic, Jewish. (Nearly all men, although the minotaur turns out to be a woman). He has a mystery with a twist which makes you gasp at the end.

You can really see that he was influenced by Chesterton, and by a lot of the German writers - his voice reminds me of Hesse - and of course Kafka. But he's so original. The colour of his world is just really different from anyone else's. The language is beautiful, and he has some perfect moments;

"In a riddle where the answer is chess, what's the one word that must not be mentioned?" I thought for a moment and said, "Chess."

I keep thinking about those lines.