Word: offing
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Dates: during 1970-1970
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Jorge Luis Borges is a quiet, delicate, blind old man who lives in Argentina. Though he has been writing for nearly 50 years, hardly anyone in the U.S. had heard of him until a decade ago. Today, especially among the literate young, he is recognized all over the world as...
Like Samuel Beckett, whose name is often coupled with his own as an influential modern writer, Borges enjoys a reputation based upon a very slender body of work. Unlike the reticent, reclusive Beckett, however, Borges is personally accessible. Though he is 70, and deaf in one ear, in addition to...
Perhaps the most pathetic imaginary being is the Lamed Wufnik of the Jews. One of 36 just men whose existence and virtue is supposed to protect the world from Jehovah's wrath, the Wufnik must justify the ways of the world before God. It is a hard but absorbing...
Beneath the book's attractively arcane surface, Borges makes some fine distinctions. The dragon, for instance, he classifies as a "necessary monster" because in some recurring way "it appeals to the human imagination." The book, moreover, provides an unprcs-sured look at the tastes and concerns that Borges began...
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