[Heteronym]

I happily own Jorge Luis Borges' completed works in four hefty volumes, plus two volumes collecting his works in collaboration with other writers (amongst them Adolfo Bioy Casares), plus two volumes with the transcripted radio conversations he had with Osvaldo Ferrari in his final years. He was the first writer I decided to follow with ardent admiration.

Although in the beginning I south him for his fascinating short-stories (I prefer the early ones, "The Library of Babel, The Garden of Forking Paths, Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius; Funes, the Memorious", anything included in Fictions), I now reread him mostly for his wonderful non-fiction: prologues, essays and articles, all of them small love letters to writers and books. To me Borge turned into an art loving literature. No one else has writen with so much passion, wit, clarity and erudition about the topic that dominated his life.

Of his poetry, I confess I never cared for very much, although he considered it better than his short fiction. And when he became blind he favored it since its regular form allowed him to better memorise it. For the prose he wrote before his seminal short-story collection I have very little love too, since it doesn't seem like Borges yet. I wouldn't find my initial enthusiasm again until The Book of Sand, his second best collection of fiction to me.

Having reread Fictions recently, I returned from it with fonder memories of short-stories like "Pierre Menard" and "Herbert Quain"; his fantasy enthralled me, but now I find myself loving these simpler pieces, funnier for book lovers, of fictional writers who rewrite Don Quixote and wrote excellent detective fiction; one of my regrets is never being able to read Quain's "The God of the Labyrinth" one day...

People often describe Borges as a writer's writer; I can't conceive a graver injustice against him. Borges was first and foremost a reader's writer, an author who delighted in the 19th century maxim of writing for the pleasure of the reader; in particular, he liked writing for people who loved books. His erudition was never impenetrable, his intellectual games were never alienating experiments.

Of Borges, the best I can say is that, more than writing great stories for my entertainment, he introduced me to dozens of new writers and hundreds of new books that will keep me enthralled for decades to come. I think that's the best a writer can hope to achieve.