On Writing

Introduction by Suzanne Jill Levine
$16.00 US
Penguin Adult HC/TR | Penguin Classics
76 per carton
On sale Jun 29, 2010 | 978-0-14-310572-5
Sales rights: World

A master class in the art of writing by one of its most distinguished and innovative practitioners

Delve into the labyrinth of Jorge Luis Borges’s thoughts on the theory and practice of literature, and learn from one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century not only what a writer does but also what a writer is. For the first time ever, here is a volume that brings together Borges’s wide-ranging reflections on writers, on the canon, on the craft of fiction and poetry, and on translation—an ars poetica of one of the twentieth century’s greatest writers.

Featuring many pieces appearing in English for the first time—including his groundbreaking early essay on magical realism, “Stories from Turkestan”—On Writing provides a map of both the changes and continuities in Borges’s aesthetic over the course of his life. It is an indispensable handbook for anyone hoping to master their own style or to witness Borges’s evolution as a writer.

On Writing

Contents
 
Introduction by Suzanne Jill Levine
A Note on the Translations

I. Becoming a Man of Letters
• Ultra Manifesto
• On Expressionism
• After Images
• Joyce’s Ulysses
• The Ballad of Reading Gaol
 
II. Word Music
• Verbiage for Poems
• An Investigation of the Word
• The Art of Verbal Abuse
• On Literary Description
• On Metaphor
• Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass
 
III. On Translation
• Two Ways to Translate
• The Homeric Versions
 
IV. Reading as Writing
• A Profession of Literary Faith
• Literary Pleasure
• The Superstitious Ethics of the Reader
• The Paradox of Apollinaire
• Kafka and his Precursors
• Flaubert and his Exemplary Destiny
 
V. The Critic at Work
• Virginia Woolf
• T. S. Eliot 
• Paul Valéry 
• William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom!
• Herman Mellville, Bartleby the Scrivener
• Henry James, The Abasement of the Northmores
• Marcel Schwob, Imaginary Lives
• H. G. Wells, The Time Machine; The, Invisible Man
• Julio Cortázar, Stories
 
VI. The Perfect Plot
• The Labyrinths of the Detective Story and Chesterton
• Ellery Queen, The Halfway House
• Adolfo Bioy Casares, The Invention of Morel
• Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone
• The Detective Story
 
VII. Narrative Art
• Stories from Turkestan
• The Cinematograph, the Biograph
• Narrative Art and Magic
• Preface to the 1954 edition of A Universal History of Infamy
• When Fiction Lives in Fiction
 
Notes
Sources

About

A master class in the art of writing by one of its most distinguished and innovative practitioners

Delve into the labyrinth of Jorge Luis Borges’s thoughts on the theory and practice of literature, and learn from one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century not only what a writer does but also what a writer is. For the first time ever, here is a volume that brings together Borges’s wide-ranging reflections on writers, on the canon, on the craft of fiction and poetry, and on translation—an ars poetica of one of the twentieth century’s greatest writers.

Featuring many pieces appearing in English for the first time—including his groundbreaking early essay on magical realism, “Stories from Turkestan”—On Writing provides a map of both the changes and continuities in Borges’s aesthetic over the course of his life. It is an indispensable handbook for anyone hoping to master their own style or to witness Borges’s evolution as a writer.

Excerpt

On Writing

Contents
 
Introduction by Suzanne Jill Levine
A Note on the Translations

I. Becoming a Man of Letters
• Ultra Manifesto
• On Expressionism
• After Images
• Joyce’s Ulysses
• The Ballad of Reading Gaol
 
II. Word Music
• Verbiage for Poems
• An Investigation of the Word
• The Art of Verbal Abuse
• On Literary Description
• On Metaphor
• Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass
 
III. On Translation
• Two Ways to Translate
• The Homeric Versions
 
IV. Reading as Writing
• A Profession of Literary Faith
• Literary Pleasure
• The Superstitious Ethics of the Reader
• The Paradox of Apollinaire
• Kafka and his Precursors
• Flaubert and his Exemplary Destiny
 
V. The Critic at Work
• Virginia Woolf
• T. S. Eliot 
• Paul Valéry 
• William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom!
• Herman Mellville, Bartleby the Scrivener
• Henry James, The Abasement of the Northmores
• Marcel Schwob, Imaginary Lives
• H. G. Wells, The Time Machine; The, Invisible Man
• Julio Cortázar, Stories
 
VI. The Perfect Plot
• The Labyrinths of the Detective Story and Chesterton
• Ellery Queen, The Halfway House
• Adolfo Bioy Casares, The Invention of Morel
• Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone
• The Detective Story
 
VII. Narrative Art
• Stories from Turkestan
• The Cinematograph, the Biograph
• Narrative Art and Magic
• Preface to the 1954 edition of A Universal History of Infamy
• When Fiction Lives in Fiction
 
Notes
Sources