Episode 4 - Narrative Pathways & Alternate Histories in Jorge Luis Borges' "Fictions"

Explicit content warning

04/10/16 • 61 min

On this episode, we discuss various stories found in Jorge Luis Borges' "Fictions," and in the process might have created a labyrinth of our own. In thinking about what many “boom” writers of Latin America were playing with in their fictional work, we draw upon Kafka, parallel universes, and some other-worldly music (made on Garage Band) to help us out. Some of the highlighted stories are "The Garden of Forking Paths," "Death and the Compass," "The Library of Babel," and "The Aleph," (taken from a different collection of short stories).

Previous Episode

Episode 3 - Saudade & Memory in Ernest Hemingway's "A Moveable Feast"

In our third episode, we take on Ernest Hemingway's memoir in a conversation about the genre of memoir, saudade and the fiction of memory.

Next Episode

Episode 5 - The Russian Post-Modern Condition in Venedikt Erofeev's Moscow to the End of the Line

In this episode, Jake and Alex give a general introduction to Postmodernism in Russian 20th century literature, and where it can be located in Venedikt Erofeev's beloved "Moscow to the End of the Line." Strange alcoholic recipes abound, hand in hand with the subversive nature of this "poema" in all its postmodern, enigmatic glory. Bibliography: 1. "In Praise of Booze: 'Moskva-Petushki' and Erasmian Irony," Oliver Ready. The Slavonic & East European Review, 2010. 2. "The Origins and Meaning of Russian Postmodernism," Michael Epstein. Published by Emory University for The National Council Soviet and Eastern European Research, 1993. 3. "Venedikt Erofeev's 'Moskva-Petushki': Performance and Performativity in the Late Soviet Text," Ann Komaromi. The Slavic and East European Journal, 2011. 4. "The Problem of Postmodernism in Russian Literary History: A Comparative Reading of 'Summer in Baden-Baden' and 'Moscow to the End of the Line,'" Vadim Shneyder. Yale University. 5. "Russian Postmodernist Fiction: Dialogue with Chaos," Mark Lipovetsky. M.E. Sharpe, 1999. 6. "Reference Guide to Russian Literature," Neil Cornwell. Routledge, 2013.