The story they chose, "The Garden of Forking Paths", is an effective crime thriller, among other things. So is another story, "Death and the Compass." I recently reread his brief landmark collection Ficciones. He could indeed be a crime writer, or a fantasist, or a literary writer. Primarily, though, he was Borges. He achieved an enviable level of thisness.
Monday, December 2, 2024
It came from Argentina
As demonstrated in the contents page featuring The Showgirl Who Can Count to Four, Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine was the first English language publication to publish the work of Jorge Luis Borges. And they certainly started something there. EQMM continues to print stories from abroad up through today. You can't expect that all of them will have that kind of impact, of course.
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2 comments:
It's interesting that Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine helped to develope an audience for Borges. That's not something I would have expected at all. Still, why not? There's room in the mystery genre to account for all kinds of styles from strict pulp to high art.
I read "The Garden of Forking Paths" this afternoon (pdf) and found it to be a strangely compelling story whose ending was more than a little sad. Surprising choice for Ellery Queen but it is a short story and no doubt mysterious. I was reminded of another book by a South American author, Gabriel Garcia Marquez's "One Hundred Years Of Solitude" and the character Jose Arcadio who becomes obsessed with examining the mysteries of the universe. He sounded to me a little like Stephen Albert.
Come to think of it Playboy also featured a number of famous short story writers. I guess Hugh Hefner liked to read when he wasn't busy doing other things. I remember the afternoon when the little girls in Jer's softball team found his collection and Jer telling them, 'Don't worry I don't read them, I only look at the pictures'.
It makes a certain amount of sense, especially given the story's theme. What I don't know is how exactly the editors discovered Borges. In the early days the magazine was edited by Frederic Dannay, who was half of the Ellery Queen writing partnership, and who wanted to publish mystery stories that were "a cut above." Maybe he had some friends who were into Latin American fiction as well.
I can see what you mean about the ending being rather sad. Tsun is kind of a tragic character, his need to prove himself leading him to do things he otherwise wouldn't. One Hundred Years of Solitude I haven't read yet but believe I will in the near future.
That was a good comeback on the softball field. I think Hef wanted to make Playboy a cultural institution rather than just another men's magazine. It worked for a while. They managed to publish stories by Ray Bradbury, Joyce Carol Oates, Haruki Murakami, etc.
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