A Universal History Of Iniquity (2004) - Plot & Excerpts
"In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity, is the vital thing." Oscar WildeExercises in Style These stories are fascinating exercises in style.They effectively document the development of Borges' style at a time when "he was a shy sort of man who could not bring himself to write short stories, and so amused himself by changing and distorting (sometimes without aesthetic justification) the stories of other men." Matter of Fact As Borges said in an earlier Preface, "the stories are not, nor do they attempt to be, psychological."I assume he meant they weren't concerned with the internal consciousness and motivation of the characters. Borges was primarily concerned with external facts, in effect, what could be witnessed or seen by those present.Only, in relation to writing, an author can help a reader to be vicariously present, and therefore to become a witness to what had been related by the author, or at least the narrator.Good, Compliant Readers Borges isn't interested in sincerity, because that can be faked.Rather, he's interested in fact and factuality (and, ironically, how that can be faked). One might expect that matters of fact would be truthful and undeniable. If you write matter of factly, then the reader will believe you. Borges mentions that reading "is an activity subsequent to writing - more resigned, more civil, more intellectual."It has the benefit of the writing, which necessarily has preceded it. The reader tends to give primacy to the writer, and therefore is both less sceptical and more trusting.However, when the author or narrator decides to play a game with the reader, then the reading can be no more authentic than the writing. An author or narrator can make a reader complicit in their fraud, their forgery of truth.An Impostor Forges His Style These exercises in style, therefore, witness Borges mimicking and constructing styles of fiction and non-fiction that give the appearance of truth, veracity and authenticity.If he fakes the style of non-fiction well enough, we will assume that he is sincere, or at least as sincere as history is capable of.Of course, it's not enough that we believe that what is factual is true. Borges must make us believe that what is not true or factual is true as well.He achieves this by setting his untruths in other people's truths. If he does this seamlessly enough, we won't be able to tell the difference.Borges, therefore, starts even this work as an impostor, or at least as someone who is interested in the methodology of imposture.The Virtues of Unlikeness It's a game, of course. As well as a challenge. Having mastered likeness, the challenge is to embrace the virtues of unlikeness. The more improbable the imposture, the greater the game. How much can Borges get away with? The paradox being that the success of the likeness on the same page might draw attention to and undermine the unlikeness. Still, Borges believes that the dilemma can be overcome with greater, rather than less, audacity:"Bogle knew that a perfect facsimile of the beloved Roger Charles Tichborne was impossible to find; he knew as well that any similarities he might achieve would only underscore certain inevitable differences. He therefore gave up the notion of likeness altogether. He sensed that the vast ineptitude of his pretence would be a convincing proof that there was no fraud, for no fraud would ever have so flagrantly flaunted features that might so easily have convinced."Man on Pink Corner Having eschewed psychology, having forged the appearance of likeness, having melded likeness and unlikeness, Borges was now ready to write "Man on Pink Corner", what seems to be a genuinely fictitious short story (or is it?).Presumably, nothing in fiction need be truly factual, although the author might seek to persuade us that it is. Fiction is, by definition, a pretence.If Borges could master fraud, was he now ready to master pretence?Some guide to Borges' modus operandi is revealed in the first sentence:"Imagine you bringing up Francisco Real that way, out of the clear blue sky, him dead and gone and all."Unlike the earlier stories, there is a first person narrator. The subject is Real, if not necessarily real. He is ostensibly invented out of nothing, brought up out of the clear blue sky. And the inventor is the second person, "you", perhaps the reader, though it could equally be Borges himself or at least "Borges".An Imaginary PrimerOur role, the role of the reader, is to be the agent who complies with the instruction implicit in the first word, "imagine".Borges entrusts us to be "more resigned, more civil, more intellectual." We have to be, in order to participate in and enjoy his labyrinthine games of the imagination. Needless to say, Borges is an adept teacher, and this is both his and our first primer. What's remarkable is that we learn to read as we watch him teach himself how to write.Of course, it was only the beginning!SOUNDTRACK:Deborah Conway - "It's Only The Beginning"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxR70...
Leer Historia Universal de la Infamia es ir a la caza de la delgada línea roja. Ésa que separa, imperceptible, la realidad y la ficción. Sucede que, en esta antología de relatos criminales, Borges se apropia de historias verídicas (sin duda, caídas del ambar de viejas páginas policiales o de las polvorientas leyendas de antaño) y las envuelve en una atmósfera fascinante. En una telaraña de detalles asombrosos, que son una reescritura de lo real y que, incluso, lo perfeccionan.Curioso: el autor logra todo esto sin caer en la pulsión falsificadora de los escritores. Ésa que los lleva remodelar el pedestre edificio de los hechos, en busca de una belleza que son incapaces de extraer de la realidad. Borges, no: aunque enriquece la historia con elementos novedosos, respeta tanto los fundamentos de lo cotidiano que resulta muy difícil distinguir dónde termina la literatura y dónde comienza la Historia.Así, desfilan por las páginas de este libro, resucitados por una de las mejores plumas del mundo, célebres maleantes de todos los tiempos y de todas las culturas: la viuda Ching, temible pirata del Oriente; Billy the Kid, bandido de los desiertos de Arizona; y el impostor Tom Castro, quien se hizo pasar por un rico desaparecido y pretendió quedarse con su fortuna. Por supuesto: en Historia Universal de la Infamia, hay otros rutilantes asesinos. Otras glorias criminales y majestuosos estafadores. Porque la realidad, al igual que la ficción, es múltiple y sorprendente. Quizás por eso, en el capítulo final (llamado "Etcétera"), Borges introduce 6 relatos nuevos, enteramente ficcionales.Pese a la amplitud de su temática, las historias de este libro son breves y concisas. Como es característico del autor. Se organizan, incluso, en subtítulos que sistematizan la acción y simplifican la lectura. Es decir: aquellos que temen a Borges, a su pasión -a veces ininteligible- por el mito y lo metafísico, pueden trabar una incipiente amistad con él por medio de este libro, sin miedo a extravirse en sus laberintos conceptuales. Eso sí: prepárense para cuestionar la realidad. Porque, en una vuelta de página cualquiera, la ficción toma su lugar. Inadvertidamente, como los estafadores e impostores de la historia. Y, entonces, sucede la magia.
What do You think about A Universal History Of Iniquity (2004)?
Briefly: A catalog, a biographical dictionary of vile people with a worldwide range, real and/or imagined (imagined, certainly, even the real). This owes a debt to Marcel Schwob’s Imaginary Lives and to which J. Rodolfo Wilcox owes a debt for having enabled The Temple of Iconoclasts (which I’ll now return to liking quite a lot), and more recently, providing premise for Roberto Bolaño’s Nazi Literature in the Americas (which I read first, bassackwards, I).4 stars for a fun, creepy read, made more enjoyable with the inclusion of a mini-bio of Billy the Kid. (Americans like to think our bad guys are as bad as anyone else’s)
—Mike Puma
I was actually pretty disappointed by this book. It's made of very short essays about some unkind people—knife-fighters, pirates, cultists—many of them figures from the footnotes of history books. Although I liked a lot of the ideas Borges presented in this book, I felt as though a lot of it fell flat. The best ideas are just mentioned in passing, and the longer passages seem to be made for the more mundane stuff. Perhaps it was the length of the pieces that prevented them from blossoming into something more.
—Benjamin
Writing a long review seems an exercise of redundancy to me: there are already many reviews in english and any spanish speaking reader worth his salt already worships Borges (if not the case, just go and read him and stop reading reviews).Suffice to say that this is his first work, a compendium of fictional criminal chronicle he did for a newspaper. It is entertaining, of course: that is the purpose of such newspaper sections. The great merit of these stories lies not the -quite generic- content but in the skill with which they were told. Two quick examples from the first story:1. He won't tell you someone got betrayed, murdered and thrown to the river, no, definitely no. He would say: "[...] Lazarus Morell would give a sign (which might have been no more than a wink) and the runaway would be freed from sight, hearing, touch, daylight, iniquity, time, benefactors, mercy, air, dogs, the universe, hope, sweat–and from himself. A bullet, a low thrust with a blade, a knock on the head, and the turtles and catfish of the Mississippi would be left to keep the secret among themselves."2. The association of verbs to inanimate objects. Regarding the drag of lime of the Mississippi he writes: "[...] it is a river of mulatto-hued water; more than four hundred million tons of mud, carried by that waters, insult the Gulf of Mexico each year." So we end with the work of a highly erudite and enormously witty man writing some chronicles to put some food on his table. The usual entertainment coming from crime narrative deserves 3 stars; the mastery with which it is written deserves 4 stars. You also get a greatly crafted tale for free, so why don't I raise it to five stars? Because it ain't a masterpiece and much less a masterpiece by the author's standards.Don't worry about that either, his next book will get him out of crime fiction into open fantasy and fully new creations. And trust me, things do get better. How much? Well, his next book "Fictions" is essentially one of the greatest books of all times and, quite likely, at the border of what human mind has imagined. Meanwhile, you will get something more humble here: mundane histories wrapped in world class prose. Not a bad opener for the menu, or so I believe.Oh well, now is time to take the hands away from the keyboard as this review -in complete accordance to what an exercise in redundancy should be- has eventually grown way too much. Verbal incontinence, I guess.
—El Avestruz Liado
