James Woodall (1)

A few weeks after I finished a biography of Borges, I found this one at a used book store with the exact same title. Serendipitous, no? So I had to buy it. I think Borges would have enjoyed it, somehow. Written in 1997, the first book I read was written in 2004, it seems to suffer from a lack of sources, a lack of cooperation from Borges's widow, and the fact that Borges has seen new life and new translations through Penguin (the newer biography seems an outgrowth of this Penguin-Kodama collaboration).

But, to the book. It is amazing to that two biographies on the same person can differ so much. The Williamson biography presents Borges's output as the outgrowth of his personal relationships: mother, father, Bioy, loves (spurned and imagined), ancestry, etc. Here, Woodall presents his literature more as an outgrowth of his bookish nature, a view I find more appealing. Still, Williamson made the excellent case that Borges's odd relationship with Norah Lange was the central unrequited love of his life -- here Woodall mentions her, in passing, three times! Though this book is about one hundred fifty pages shorter, Woodall interprets the stories a bit more like a critic than Williamson, which is a plus. He also treats Borges as poet more often than Williamson. The book ends rather abruptly, however, swiftly jumping through the 1980s, and giving short shrift to Maria Kodama. He also calls some late Borges stories "sub-Borgesian," which, I think, is an insult, as some of the latter stories are just as good as his 1940s output. This I wonder about.

In the end, I don't know which biography is the better. Thus, I give them both four stars.… (meer)