On this day in 1899 Jorge Luis Borges was born. It is sixty years since Borges's published Ficciones, his breakthrough collection of "essays" -- the collection which introduced us to "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote" and other such strangeness. Ficciones is now regarded as one of the essential postmodern texts, and the Buenos Aires guidebooks now point out Borges's home, his favorite cafés, and the streets he loved to walk, though blind (one of them named after him). So too, the books continue to appear -- in 2004 these included both a 500-page biography by Edwin Williamson and a personal memoir by Borges's decades-long housekeeper ... FULL STORY »
