Before reading [b:The Total Library: Non-Fiction 1922-1986|30712|The Total Library Non-Fiction 1922-1986|Jorge Luis Borges|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1331495549l/30712._SY75_.jpg|31055], I had not grasped how prolific a non-fiction writer Borges was. This collection includes many pieces not previously translated into English, but is very far from comprehensive. The book is ordered both chronologically and thematically. There are sections of book prologues and literary criticism (relentlessly perceptive), film reviews (hilariously sardonic), lectures (fascinating), and groups of essays on Dante, the Second World War, and miscellaneous philosophical, historical, and theological topics. Such an idiosyncratic structure suits the extraordinary range of writing that Borges turned his hand to. I will not pretend that his erudition did not become exhausting at times. I got stuck for a while upon the 1936 essay 'A History of Eternity'. Looking back, I am astounded to realise it is only 16 pages long - although that is lengthy for Borges. His non-fiction has the same jewel-like succinct quality as his short stories. I did detect a subtle shift as the decades passed. There is a certain additional humility in the post-war writing, tempering the confidence of someone with a beautifully indexed library in his mind.

There are many pleasures to be found in [b:The Total Library: Non-Fiction 1922-1986|30712|The Total Library Non-Fiction 1922-1986|Jorge Luis Borges|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1331495549l/30712._SY75_.jpg|31055]. Allow me to list them, with examples. Firstly, there is the fascination of continuity. Borges returns to the similar topics and reconsiders the same quote from different angles, many years apart. Reading these related reflections together enriches them, much as rereading his stories in the varying configurations of different collections casts them in new lights. I particularly liked the multiple appearances of this Schopenhauer quote:

Arthur Schopenhauer wrote that dreaming and wakefulness are the pages of a single book, and that to read them in order is to live, and to leaf through them at random, to dream. Paintings within paintings and books that branch into other books help us sense this oneness.

Secondly, Borges is very funny. His film reviews are beautifully written Hot Takes containing curiously contemporary-sounding one-liners. Imagine Borges on twitter. He would be brilliant, prolific, and unavoidable:

This film - The Boys of Yesteryear, etc - is unquestionably one of the best Argentine films I have ever seen, that is, one of the worst films in the world.

His literary essays also include magnificently sardonic comments, of which this on orientalism is my favourite:

Working my way with enthusiasm and credulity through the English version of a certain Chinese philosopher, I came across this memorable passage: 'A man condemned to death doesn't care that he is standing on the edge of a precipice, for he has already renounced life'. Here the translator attached an asterisk, and his note informed me that this interpretation was preferable to that of a rival Sinologist, who translated the passage thus: 'The servants destroy the works of art, so that they will not have to judge their beauties and defects'. Then, like Paolo and Francesca, I read no more. A mysterious scepticism has slipped into my soul.

Thirdly, the wonder and enchantment Borges evokes by making historical and literary connections. My favourite example of this involves dreams of Kublai Khan's palace, perhaps unsurprisingly given Borges and I share a particular interest in dreams:

The first dreamer was given the vision of the palace, and he built it; the second, who did not know of the other's dream, was given the poem about the palace. If this plan does not fail, someone, on a night centuries removed from us, will dream the same dream, and not suspect that others have dreamed it, and he will give it a form of marble or of music. Perhaps this series of dreams has no end, or perhaps the last one will be the key.

Fourthly, the unsettling power of his commentary on Nazism during the 1930s. I found his review of a Nazi children's book, titled 'A Pedagogy of Hatred', particularly memorable:

I defy pornographers to show me a picture more vile than any of the twenty-two illustrations that comprise the children's book Trau keinem Fuchs auf gruener Heid und keinem Jud bei seinem Eid [Don't Trust Any Fox from a Heath or Any Jew on his Oath] whose fourth edition now infests Bavaria. It was first published a year ago, in 1936, and has already sold 51,000 copies. It's goal is to instill in the children of the Third Reich a distrust and animosity towards Jews. Verse (we know the mnemonic virtues of rhyme) and colour engravings (we know how effective images are) collaborate in this veritable textbook of hatred.

Fifthly and finally, his insightful comments that each deserve a book-length extrapolation and I will keep thinking about for some while. This is perhaps the most ubiquitous delight of Borges' writing. I was especially taken by his commentary on fiction genres in a prologue to [b:The Invention of Morel|94486|The Invention of Morel|Adolfo Bioy Casares|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1621713012l/94486._SY75_.jpg|2302985], his essay on 'The Scandinavian Destiny', and this theory about the cultural primacy of a genre or form:

Every era believes that there is a literary genre that has a kind of primacy. Today, for example, any writer who has not written a novel is asked when he is going to write one. (I myself am continually being asked.) In Shakespeare's time, the literary work par excellence was the vast epic poem, and that idea persisted into the eighteenth century, when we have the example of Voltaire, the least epic of men, who nevertheless writes an epic because without an epic he would not have been a true man of letters for his contemporaries.

I think the novel still has primacy now, albeit a different type of novel. Incidentally, I like to think Borges never wrote a full length novel because when he tried to it warped the very fabric of reality. His fiction can only be microdosed, lest it have dangerously unpredictable effects on the boundary between reality and dreams.

There are undoubtedly additional joys to reading non-fiction by Borges that are more specific and/or harder to articulate. As ever when I read about it, I was left wanting to reread Dante's Inferno. [b:The Total Library: Non-Fiction 1922-1986|30712|The Total Library Non-Fiction 1922-1986|Jorge Luis Borges|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1331495549l/30712._SY75_.jpg|31055] is a rich and rewarding collection. Even when I was too exhausted to take in the philosophical nuances, I revelled in the inimitable style of Borges. ( )

As this collection is chronological, it starts off with some typical problems of young writers--wanting to show off their linguistic expertise and stating opinion as fact. However, as he matures, he reaches the same kind of dizzying heights that he achieves with his fiction. ( )

As this collection is chronological, it starts off with some typical problems of young writers--wanting to show off their linguistic expertise and stating opinion as fact. However, as he matures, he reaches the same kind of dizzying heights that he achieves with his fiction. ( )

Jorge Luis Borges' reputation is quite rightly forged on his unique, cultured and labyrinthine short stories, but any reader lucky enough to become aware of this writer's work knows that many of those same stories take the form of essays – laconic commentaries on imaginary books being one delightful staple. Consequently, opening The Total Library, a collection of Borges' actual non-fiction essays from across his whole career, is not just a task for the completist but a rewarding and harmonious counterpart to his fiction.

It is, sometimes, a heavy task. Because the book does cover Borges' whole career (from 1922 to 1986), there's a prodigious amount of material, and to be honest a fair bit of it (particularly the early stuff) is inessential, even though it's never unwelcome. And though Borges is often expanding on topics that are so intelligently exciting for the reader when adapted into his fiction, the lack here of that uniquely Borgesian fantastical twist on the topic can sometimes feel like you are missing out on a crucial x-factor.

However, if the reader is able to separate their love for Borges' fiction from Borges the essayist – even though that reputation for quality fiction may be what brought them here – they will find plenty to sate them. Borges' essays lack the moreish pugnacity of a polemicist or the entertainment of a journalistic wit – when he does express a contrary opinion, such as his analysis that Edgar Allan Poe's 'The Raven' is not a good poem (pg. 493), it doesn't raise the reader's hackles but instead feels like when you disappoint your favourite teacher. His essay on the baseless myth that Shakespeare didn't write his own plays (pp463-73) – which in my personal view is a conspiracy theory that arose simply because some posh Brits from the 19th century onwards couldn't accept that a man of the lower classes could write so well – is simultaneously gracious and yet completely dismissive of such nonsense.

So Borges is too gentlemanly to be an attack-dog, but for those who appreciate a more cerebral approach, this is a fine book. You could hardly hope for anyone more learned, lucid and – crucially for an essayist – independent in their thought. Some of Borges' strongest essays here are those from 1937-1945 condemning support for Nazism in Argentina; criticism of Hitler might not seem particularly courageous or contrarian to us in the here and now, but there was much support for Germany in Borges' country at the time, and his eloquent essays in support of Britain and the Anglo-Saxon culture, calling out his countrymen's own fascism, are admirable. Elsewhere, there are the familiar erudite Borgesian topics, but also stray thoughts on pop culture (including brief pieces on King Kong and a sci-fi novel by Ray Bradbury) and a touchingly personal one on his experience of progressive blindness. It won't be a surprise for regular readers of this author to learn, but Borges is a charming and original companion on just about any topic. ( )

Whatever words he put his mind to he mastered. As a child he read the Encyclopedia Britannica while his father studied in the library. A curiosity and fascination with all things makes his non-fiction as interesting and wondrous as his fiction and poetry. Reading this you will learn more than a little and be entranced at the same time. Oh, and feel like you've spent time with a wise friend. ( )