Title

Generations: Borges and His Progeny

Keywords

Priests, Book reviews, Triangulation, Fiction, Novelists, Sons, Latin American literature, Written narratives, Narrators

Abstract

"J?venes, ?matad a Borges!" Legend has it that these were the parting words of novelist Witold Gombrowicz as he set sail for his native Poland after spending the duration of World War II in Argentina (King xi). Gombrowicz perceived?correctly, as it turns out?that subsequent genera tions of writers would need to reconcile themselves to Borges before they could find their own voices. To be sure, Borges was not always engaged willingly by his immediate successors, and anecdotes about the suspicions with which he was regarded by the so-called Boom writers are as ubiquitous as the traces of his presence in their texts. Torn between their admiration for his erudition, limpid prose style, and formal sophistication on the one hand and his apparent indifference to his own historical and social moment on the other, the first generation of post-Borgesian writers could not decide whether to praise their mentor or to bury him.1

Original Publication Citation

“Generations: Borges and His Progeny.” ​Latin American Literary Review​ 28.56 (2000): 27-42.

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2000-12

Publisher

Latin American Literacy Review

Language

English

College

Humanities

Department

Philosophy

University Standing at Time of Publication

Associate Professor

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