Other Inquisitions
Borges' essays are indistinguishable from his fictions; both are exercises in philosophical speculation disguised as scholarship or storytelling. Essays on Zeno's paradoxes, Pascal's sphere, the detective story, time. The most intellectually intoxicating essays of the 20th century.
Individual essays here cut off right when the argument gets interesting, reading more like sketches than finished pieces, and Borges assumes a familiarity with the author or historical problem under discussion that he never bothers introducing. The essays on lesser-known authors and translators are the ones readers flag as skippable, calling them far less memorable than the metaphysical pieces on time and infinity. One frustrated reader complains a promising thread gets cut “just as things about to get real,” and another calls certain passages “very, very, overly, awfully specific” rather than clarifying anything. Newcomers who start here before reading the fiction report feeling out of their depth, and the original 1952 compilation was assembled without a clear organizing principle, reading to some as a grab bag rather than a built argument. Read it after Ficciones, not before.
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
