Signs of Borges

by Sylvia Molloy, Oscar Montero (Translator)

Available for the first time in English, Signs of Borges is widely regarded as the best single book on the work of Jorge Luis Borges. With a critical sensibility informed by Barthes, Lacan, Foucault, Blanchot, and the entire body of Borges scholarship, Sylvia Molloy explores the problem of meaning in Borges's work by remaining true to the uncanniness that is its foundation.
Borges's sustained practice of the uncanny gives rise in his texts to endless tensions between illusion and meaning, and to the competing desires for fragmentation, dispersal, and stability. Molloy traces the movement of Borges's own writing by repeatedly spanning the boundaries of genre and cutting across the conventional separations of narrative, lyric and essay, fact and fiction. Rather than seeking to resolve the tensions and conflicts, she preserves and develops them, thereby maintaining the potential of these texts to disturb. At the site of these tensions, Molloy locates the play between meaning and meaninglessness that occurs in Borges's texts. From this vantage point his strategies of deception, recourse to simulacra, inquisitorial urge to unsettle binarism, and distrust of the permanent--all that makes Borges Borges--are examined with unmatched skill and acuity.
Elegantly written and translated, Signs of Borges presents a remarkable and dynamic view of one of the most international and compelling writers of this century. It will be of great interest to all students of twentieth-century literature, particularly to students of Latin American literature.

Genres: Spanish Literature

160 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 1979

About the author

Sylvia Molloy is an Argentine writer and critic who has taught at Princeton, Yale and NYU, from where she retired in 2010. At NYU she held the Albert Schweitzer Chair in the Humanities. She is the author of two novels: En común olvido (2002). She has also written two short prose pieces, Varia imaginación (2003) and Desarticulaciones (2010). Her critical work includes La Diffusion de la littérature hispano-américaine en France au XXe siècle (1972), Las letras de Borges (1979), At Face Value: Autobiographical Writing in Spanish America (1991), Poses de fin de siglo. Desbordes del género en la modernidad (2013), and edited volumes such as Hispanisms and Homosexualities (1998) and Poéticas de la distancia. Adentro y afuera de la literatura argentina (2006). She has been a fellow of the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Social Science Research Council, and the Civitella Ranieri Foundation. She has served as President of the Modern Language Association of America and of the Instituto Internacional de Literatura Iberoamericana and holds an honorary degree in humane letters from Tulane University.

In 2007 she created the MFA in Creative Writing in Spanish, with the collaboration of Lila Zemborain and Mariela Dreyfus. The MFA is the first program of its kind in the United States. It is modeled along the lines of the NYU MFA in Creative Writing in English, taking advantage as well of a similar, bilingual Program, at University of Texas at El Paso. Classes and workshops are taught in Spanish and students are mostly Spanish, Latin American or Latino.

Reviews

[Ekaitz Ruiz De Vergara · Rating 1 out of 5]

Me acerqué a este libro porque en todas partes figura como uno de los estudios esenciales sobre Borges, pero no fui capaz de identificar una sola idea clara y distinta en sus dos centenares de páginas. Resulta ejemplar, eso sí, por la característica prosa retórica que suele cultivar la crítica postestructuralista. Empieza estableciendo una categoría abstracta desde la que analizar la obra de Borges (el "vaivén"), que es lo suficientemente vaga e indefinida como para explicarlo todo y no explicar nada. Después va dando saltos, sin método y sin orden, de un texto a otro. Por supuesto, cita mucho a Blanchot, Lacan, Foucault, pero estas referencias no añaden nada a la argumentación, principalmente porque no hay argumentación. En varios pasajes exhibe la ignorancia que su palabrería trata de disimular: usa la expresión "petitio princeps" en dos ocasiones, evidenciando que no es una errata. El único atisbo de sabiduría que se permite el libro está en el prólogo, donde Molloy cuenta que nunca le envió su trabajo a Borges porque sospechaba no lo leería.

[darío hereñú · Rating 3 out of 5]

Desde el prólogo, la intuí como una ensayista "abre-cabezas". No me equivoqué.
Quizás -in my humble opinion- los mejores ensayos que se hayan escrito sobre el bardo ciego. Me hago cargo de esta elección.
Me gusta ese pensamiento lateral en el cual decidió embarcarse, ese alejamiento ex-profeso de apartarse de lo que piensan los cada vez más crecientes ensayos que se hacen sobre los cuentos, la casuística, el pensamiento, las contradicciones, la filosofía, la ética borgeana.

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Acquired Sept 7, 2002
City Lights Book Shop, London, Ontario