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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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'.
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