Borges : A Life [Hardcover]

Jorge Luis Borges famously wrote that all literature is autobiographical, something so true in his own case that I had my doubts whether his any biography of him could tell us any more than his literature. After all, there isn't much compelling about Mr. Borges' life aside from his writing: he lived at home with his mother until she died when he was 75 years old, and he boasted about not venturing beyond his bedroom and his father's library for days at a time. Without a doubt, Mr. Borges' extremely original work is far more interesting than his seemingly unimaginative life.

All that made for a challenging assignment for biographer Edwin Williamson, who pulled it off surprisingly well. Mr. Williamson certainly did his leg work: he apparently read everything Mr. Borges wrote short of his laundry lists, and he talked to scores of people who knew Mr. Borges when he was alive.

But the most interesting parts of this book's 384 pages was still the examination of the literature, where Mr. Williamson convincingly reveals how much of the great writer's work was an elaborate code hiding his personal suffering coming from failed loves, and a feeling of inadequacy in regard to his mother, who all but worshipped the heroes of the Argentine independence movement in her family line.

But that is about as close as Mr. Williamson comes to uncovering Mr. Borges' inner self. He could have come a bit closer had he not left out several important facts that must have been easy to come by: Mr. Borges' finally found love with former student María Kodama, who was many years younger than the writer. But Mr. Williamson doesn't tell us how much younger. Additionally, Mr. Borges' well-known and important (but puzzling) estrangement from his boyhood friend Adolfo Bioy Casares gets only a passing mention. And Mr. Borges' political naïveté and confusion -- he called Argentina's dictatorship of the mid-1970s to the early 1980s a "necessary evil" and he turned his back on his native land by choosing to die in Switzerland -- is chronicled but not explained.

It's difficult to judge how much of this is Mr. Williamson's fault. As one of the 20th century's most important and influential writers, Mr. Borges is clearly a worthy subject for a major biography. But the man's private life perhaps means that a worthy biography is impossible. Despite Mr. Williamson's noble effort, the best biography of the enigmatic Argentine may still be his collected works.

This is a fine biography of the great Argentine writer, Jorge Luis Borges. Williamson's primary goals are to provide a good description of Borges' life and to correlate events of his life with his written works. This good book is the product of both careful research on Borges' life and a sensitive reading of Borges' publications. This book is best appreciated by those with a good familiarity with Borges' fictions and poetry. Penguin has recently published excellent collections of Borges' fictions, poetry, and non-fiction writing. If you haven't read Borges for a while, reading Williamson's biography in tandem with parts of the Penguin collections is a good experience.

Williamson does a particularly good job of pointing out the parallels between Borges' personal preoccupations, particularly his search for love, and changes in directions in his work. Borges was a sickly, bookish child who became one of those people who view the world through a highly intellectualized prism. For example, one of his enduring preoccupations was a search for love that would accomplish what Borges thought the love of Beatrice had done for Dante. Borges also had a complex relationship with his parents which also had significant intellectual dimensions and was entangled with his sense of identity as an Argentine. Like many very creative people, Borges was an odd and often unhappy individual who was able to turn some of his personal conflicts and agony into substantial work. Many of the apparently metaphysical themes of his fictions were personal issues for Borges. Williamson does an excellent job of illuminating Borges' work.

Williamson is also very good on Borges' somewhat convoluted relationship to his home country. As mentioned about, this was bound up with his complex relations with his parents. Borges was often, however, an engaged intellectual. In the 30s, 40s, and 50s, he was an outspoken opponent of the right and of Peron. Some of his stands demonstrated real courage because he spoke out when Peron was at the height of his power. Late in life, unfortunately, his hatred of Peronism led to him to give support to the detestable military dictatorship responsible for the Dirty War. He came to regret this stance and did exhibit some moral leadership in human rights campaigns against the dictators.

This will be the standard biography, at least in English, for some time.

Edwin Williamson turns Borges' own oft employed techniques of psychoanalysis and detective work on his subject in an effort to link events in Borges' life with Borges' literary creation. He seizes on several themes, honor, rebellion, alienation, love, nationalism, and responsibility to forge these links.

The results are decidedly mixed for Mr. Williamson sometimes seems to omit detail for conjecture without justifying his viewpoint. The author may make too much of some of the linked themes here, for sometimes he seems to be straining to force circumstances in Borges' life to correspond to a story or poem. That is not to deny the clearly articulated autobiographical nature of Mr. Borges' writing. But Borges favored the aforementioned themes and a well-known and oft-used set of symbols---tigers, mirrors, daggers, books, and so on---throughout his career and did not necessarily employ a specific theme because of a particular event.

Borges' political philosophies and missteps are crucial elements as are his early artistic leanings toward the avant garde. His boldness in those areas contrasts harshly with his sometimes weak personality, most notably demonstrated by his nearly lifelong deference to his mother (who lived to be 99) and his repeated failing at establishing and maintaining a meaningful, normal long-term romantic relationship until he was elderly.

Whether one quibbles with Mr. Williamson's presentation, one has to admire the attention to detail and the effort he has poured into "Borges: A Life." Mr. Williamson has consulted with an array of sources, reviewed myriad documents, and perhaps more crucially, interviewed many who knew Borges, especially Maria Kodoma, his companion and eventually his wife. Yet while he often seems to leave no stone unturned, he otherwise glosses over other significant events such as Borges' estrangement from his remaining family after his mother died or his separation from literary compatriots and collaborators.

As a previous reviewer here noted---and I agree---there is some degree of repetition employed in this biography, perhaps a tad too much. At times the book drags a bit and in other spots it does compel one to stay up a bit too late. All in all, this biography meets its stated goal of examining Borges' literary output in context of his life. But the result of applying this lens is that Borges the person does not fully come into view and the characterizations may make him appear more ineffectual and enigmatic that he actually was.

I support the notion that this work will remain an important but imperfect distillation of Borges' life but suspect that some scholarly missive will one day supplant "Borges: A Life" as the definitive biography of Borges.