This is not the only occasion in With Borges when the reader feels more than a little envious of Manguel.īooks meant the world to Borges, and not just in the simple sense that he was greatly in love with books and literature. Manguel would read, Borges would listen closely (he knew many of his favourite works by heart), and then make some observations of "wonderful perspicacity and wit, not only sharing with me his passion for these great writers but also showing me how they worked by taking paragraphs apart with the amorous intensity of a clockmaker". Manguel didn't know much about him, but he was a bibliophile as well, and when asked if he would read to Borges in the evenings he consented.įor a few years, till the time Manguel left Argentina in 1968, the two would go over the books in Borges's library in the evenings-Dante, Chesterton, and Kipling were among Borges's favourite writers.
By this time Borges, in his late fifties, had become prey to the blindness that ran in his family, and, as someone who lived almost exclusively for books, he was in need of someone to read to him.
As a boy Manguel used to work after school in an Anglo-German bookstore called Pygmalion in Buenos Aires, and Borges was an ocasional visitor there. Manguel's friendship with Borges began in a very unusual way. With Borges brims over with warm details of Borges the writer and Borges the man, but it is also it is also written in a circling, allusive, aphoristic style that shows Borges's own influence on Manguel. The literary critic and essayist Alberto Manguel not only knows the work of Borges better than anyone else, he was also a close friend and ally of Borges. The only man who could have written such a book about Jorge Luis Borges has now. The first thing to note about With Borges is its singularity.
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