"The Streetcorner Man" is the second story, also treated as an autobiographical anecdote. Borges as a young man in a small town looked up to the local head punk nicknamed "The Slasher." This was a fellow who walked with an easy swagger and had the town beauty on his arm. The story concerns the night that a tough from another town rolls into a local dance barn and calls the Slasher out. This "Butcher" heard that there was a kid who fancied himself good with a knife and wanted to see for himself. To Borges's shock and disappointment, his hero the Slasher does nothing, allowing this Butcher to steal his girl and dignity in public. The events which unfold afterward change the course of Borges's life and views, and the tale ends in a way that invites speculation and interpretation as to exactly how much Borges changed.
"The Approach to al Mu'tasim" is the third piece. It reads as a book review of the first Bombay mystical whodunnit. Borges has access to a second edition of the story which was reprinted in England, and describes the plot in a drawn out fashion. He holds the mysticism up to the light and decides that the book might have been better in the first edition, without the shifts in wording between the first and second edition. Interesting in the abstract, but not the real meat of this book.
"The Circular Ruins" is the fourth piece. After I finished this short story, I thanked my friend via text message for the novel again. This was a short tale in which I was well pleased and engaged.
In the beginning, a gray man washes up on the shore, and stumbles to a temple to dream. Not just sleep, but to dream a man into life. He receives food and water from unseen villagers, who recognize him as a priest or magician. This man has a single purpose in his dreaming, and creates a mental classroom to instruct constructs on the nature of reality and the steps necessary to achieve it. In the course of this slumbered semester, he weeds out the "yes, sir" students who passively accept his lectures. He drills those reflections who question him to further narrow the field to the worthiest of becoming real. Just when the dreamer is on the cusp of moving to the next stage with a student, disaster strikes in the form of insomnia. He cannot achieve a dream state in which to connect to his tutelage.
The descriptions and care with which Borges weaves this story are very attractive to my sensibilities of imagination. The ending sentence of the story made me think, and smile at the thought. Like a last note of a finely performed song, I was driven to encore him in moving on to the next story.
"Death & The Compass" was another non-autobiographical short story. It concerned an intellectual private detective and the head officer investigating a murder of a Jewish Rabbi. The practical policeman assumes that it was a jewel heist gone wrong, as the Jew's hotel room was opposite a known man of wealth. The detective, Erik Lonnrot, sees the a page on the dead man's typewriter: "The first letter of the Name has been uttered" and connects it to a greater semitic agenda. A second and third murder accompanied by mystical symbols reinforce this original suspicion. Lonnrot studies the dead man's books and discovers the legend of the 99 names of God, of the theory that there is a hundredth name, one that is Absolute and powerful.
This story is also well executed, holding my interest and curiosity as to the resolution and revelation of the mystery. I had to read some passages multiple times to understand what happened though, as the names and locations were unfamiliar to my mental landscape.
The sixth piece is extremely short. "The Life of Tadeo Isidoro Cruz." It is a portrait of symmetry, but the players were unfamiliar to me, so I was left with a vague feeling that I was missing a piece of history which would set this in startling clarity and focus.
That is all I have
Because today was mixed bag
Of cats with coffee
Ewww. I never take cats with my coffee. Too hairy.
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