His library (which like that of every other reader was also his autobiography) reflected his belief in chance and the rules of anarchy. ‘I am a pleasure-seeking reader: I’ve never allowed my sense of duty to have a hand in such a personal matter as that of buying books.’
Alberto Manguel, With Borges
If he had a favourite literary genre (he disbelieved in literary genres) it was the epic. In the Anglo-Saxon sagas, in Homer, in the gangster sagas and westerns of Hollywood, in Melville and in the mythology of the Buenos Aires underworld, he recognised the same themes of courage and battle. For Borges, the epic themes is an essential human hunger, like that for love or happiness, or misfortune.
…He loved detective novels. He found in their formulae the ideal narrative structures which allow the fiction writer to set up his own borders and to concentrate on the efficiency of words and images made of words. He enjoyed significant details. He once observed, as we were reading the Sherlock Holmes story ‘The Red-Haired League’, that detective fiction was closer to the Aristotelian notion of a literary work than any other genre.
Alberto Manguel, ibid.
