Today I Learned

that Borges's mother lived till she was 99. The guy just couldn't catch a break. He didn't rebel against her until after she was dead -- when he was in his 60s. He'd suffered many rejections in love and even made an unhappy marriage just because his mother thought he needed someone to look after him, after she died. Incredibly, Borges did find love in his 60s. But overall he had a miserable life.

The descriptions of his stories still make me burst out laughing. In one, a man with a scar on his face relates the story of being pursued and stabbed until it slowly becomes apparent that in fact he was the one who did the stabbing, and he's posing as his own victim.

It makes sense that Borges wrote stories that lead into snarls, doubling and repetitions rather than outward to otherness. It's what his inner life seemed to have been like. But should that be known? Reading biographies is a bit dicey since you don't really want to know a writer you revere is a weirdo, coward, drunkard or wife abuser (those last two apply to Faulkner, whose biography was a terrible experience for me).