When Borges hears that Parini owns a 1957 Morris Minor, he declares a long-held wish to visit the Highlands, where he hopes to meet a man in Inverness who is interested in Anglo-Saxon riddles. Borges-visiting his translator in Scotland-is in his seventies, blind and frail. There, through unlikely circumstances, he meets the famed Argentinian author Jorge Luis Borges. In perhaps an hour or less I wrote a one-page review of this great novel, and that satisfied the impulse.”īorges and Me: An Encounter Copyright © 2020 by Jay Parini.In this evocative work of what the author in his afterword calls 'a kindof novelistic memoir,' Jay Parini takes us back fifty years, when he fled the United States for Scotland-in flight from the Vietnam War and desperately in search of his adult life. But then, one day – one day! - I woke early and went to my desk. The volume would require perhaps a thousand pages to encompass everything I wished to say.” There would be fratricide, of course, and matricide. A saga of family life over many generations, with failed love affairs, and incest, and spectacular achievements, too. There would be gauchos and prostitutes, and many criminals. “But you must know: I hoped for many decades to write an epic story of the Pampas.

“Never,” he said, with a smile that vanished as quickly as it came. “So you haven’t written novels?” I asked, hoping I didn’t sound too dismissive. Some of them only a page in length, or less than a page.” I write in extremes-only the smallest of stories. He took a long slow drink and smiled, wiping the foam from his lips on the sleeve of his jacket. I say, moderation in all things, even moderation. Aristotle saw moderation as the essence of virtue. Confucius said the doctrine of the mean was the highest virtue, and rare among men. The beer is too cold, and it prevents us from tasting. This is the mistake we have made in Argentina.

He sniffed the foamy head of the brew, stirred it with one finger, then tasted it. I watched Borges bend over the glass, both hands around it and lightly trembling. I quickly agreed that he was not, and fetched two pints of Export: the flat, warm beer with a tawny color that students drank in vast quantities in St. “This Borges,” he continued, “this much older man, he would like to drink on this journey.” He rapped his knuckles on the tabletop. What a relief it would be, I thought, to feel free of my own young self. But I am feeling quite free of that young man, that Borges.” Since then, I am so careful not to shame myself. Once, when I was a student, they said: Borges is a drunkard. He wrung his hands in a peculiar fashion, as if they belonged to someone else.

The old men, they would often bow as he passed.

He was a figure in the army, a hero in Argentina. My grandfather’s house in the countryside, it was full of blazing wood.

Jay parini borges