In room 19

In a hotel, a younger Jorge Luis Borges meets an older Jorge Luis Borges, already registered in room 19. The older Borges explains that in 1979, the younger Borges will give in to the temptation to write a “great book.” It will be “a masterpiece, in the most overwhelming sense of the word.” The older Borges explains:


Jorge Luis Borges, “August 25, 1983,” in Collected Fictions, trans. Andrew Hurley (New York: Penguin, 1998).

The older Borges adds that when he published this work, under a pseudonym, he was taken “for a clumsy imitator of Borges.”

“I’m not surprised,” says the younger Borges. “Every writer sooner or later becomes his own least intelligent disciple.”

Other Borges posts
Borges manuscript found : Borges on reading : A sentence from “The Aleph” : “Hourglasses, maps, eighteenth-century typefaces”

[Borges was born on August 24, 1899.]