Plainpalais is a neighbourhood in Geneva, Switzerland , and a former municipality of the Canton of Geneva . It is mentioned in Mary Shelley 's Frankenstein .
108-464: Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges ' ashes are buried in the cemetery of Plainpalais. The Plaine de Plainpalais is a large public square (78 135 square metres ). It is home of the Plainpalais skatepark . Inaugurated in 2012, the Plainpalais skatepark is intended for young people over the age of 10 who practise skateboarding , roller skating and BMX riding at any level. Covering 3,000 m, it
216-544: A librarian and public lecturer . In 1955, he was appointed director of the National Public Library and professor of English Literature at the University of Buenos Aires . He became completely blind by the age of 55. Scholars have suggested that his progressive blindness helped him to create innovative literary symbols through imagination. By the 1960s, his work was translated and published widely in
324-454: A " Spencerian anarchist who believes in the individual and not in the State" due to his father's influence. In an interview with Richard Burgin during the late 1960s, Borges described himself as a "mild" adherent of classical liberalism . He further recalled that his opposition to communism and to Marxism was absorbed in his childhood, stating: "Well, I have been brought up to think that
432-758: A "very mean man" for unconditionally supporting the Soviet Union and demonizing the United States. Borges commented about Neruda, "Now he knows that's rubbish." In the same interview, Borges also criticized famed poet and playwright Federico García Lorca , who was abducted by Nationalist soldiers and executed without trial during the Spanish Civil War . In Borges's opinion, Lorca's poetry and plays, when examined against his tragic death, appeared better than they actually were. In 1934, Argentine ultra-nationalists , sympathetic to Adolf Hitler and
540-438: A 1997 interview on Charlie Rose , Wallace said that the notes were to disrupt the linear narrative, to reflect his perception of reality without jumbling the narrative structure, and that he could have jumbled the sentences "but then no one would read it". D. T. Max has described Wallace's work as an "unusual mixture of the cerebral and the hot-blooded", often featuring multiple protagonists and spanning different locations in
648-456: A Chinese professor in England, Dr. Yu Tsun, who spies for Germany during World War I, in an attempt to prove to the authorities that an Asian person is able to obtain the information that they seek. A combination of book and maze, it can be read in many ways. Through it, Borges arguably invented the hypertext novel and went on to describe a theory of the universe based upon the structure of such
756-691: A bitter dispute with the French publisher Gallimard regarding the republication of the complete works of Borges in French, with Pierre Assouline in Le Nouvel Observateur (August 2006) calling her "an obstacle to the dissemination of the works of Borges". Kodama took legal action against Assouline, considering the remark unjustified and defamatory, asking for a symbolic compensation of one euro. Kodama also rescinded all publishing rights for existing collections of his work in English, including
864-401: A drug and alcohol detoxification program. He later said his time there changed his life. Dogs were important to Wallace, and he spoke of opening a shelter for stray canines. According to his friend Jonathan Franzen , he "had a predilection for dogs who'd been abused, and [were] unlikely to find other owners who were going to be patient enough for them". In the early 1990s, Wallace was in
972-605: A family friend, Macedonio Fernández , became a major influence on Borges. The two would preside over discussions in cafés, at country retreats, or in Fernandez's tiny apartment in the Balvanera district. He appears by name in Borges's Dialogue about a Dialogue , in which the two discuss the immortality of the soul. In 1933, Borges gained an editorial appointment at Revista Multicolor de los Sábados (the literary supplement of
1080-467: A first-rate human mind stripped of all foundations of religious or ideological certainty – a mind turned wholly inward on itself. His stories are inbent and hermetic, with the oblique terror of a game whose rules are unknown and its stakes everything." Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo was born into an educated middle-class family on 24 August 1899. They were in comfortable circumstances but not wealthy enough to live in downtown Buenos Aires , so
1188-399: A la vez los libros y la noche. No one should read self-pity or reproach Into this statement of the majesty Of God; who with such splendid irony, Granted me books and night at one touch. His later collection of poetry, Elogio de la Sombra ( In Praise of Darkness ), develops this theme. In 1956 the University of Cuyo awarded Borges the first of many honorary doctorates and
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#17327721460151296-457: A large house with an English library of over one thousand volumes; Borges would later remark that "if I were asked to name the chief event in my life, I should say my father's library." His father gave up practicing law due to the failing eyesight that would eventually affect his son. In 1914, the family moved to Geneva , Switzerland, and spent the next decade in Europe. In Geneva, Borges Haslam
1404-484: A lovely singing voice". In studying philosophy, Wallace pursued modal logic and mathematics, and presented in 1985 a senior thesis in philosophy and modal logic that was awarded the Gail Kennedy Memorial Prize and posthumously published as Fate, Time, and Language: An Essay on Free Will (2010). Wallace adapted his honors thesis in English as the manuscript of his first novel, The Broom of
1512-554: A media-saturated society. Wallace's fiction combines narrative modes and authorial voices that incorporate jargon and invented vocabulary, such as self-generated abbreviations and acronyms, long, multi- clause sentences, and an extensive use of explanatory endnotes and footnotes, as in Infinite Jest and the story "Octet" (collected in Brief Interviews with Hideous Men ), and most of his non-fiction after 1996. In
1620-558: A novel. Composed of stories taking up over sixty pages, the book was generally well received, but El jardín de senderos que se bifurcan failed to garner for him the literary prizes many in his circle expected. Victoria Ocampo dedicated a large portion of the July 1942 issue of Sur to a "Reparation for Borges." Numerous leading writers and critics from Argentina and throughout the Spanish-speaking world contributed writings to
1728-409: A political tract. It was meant to stand for the fact that there was something tragic in the fate of a real Nazi. Except that I wonder if a real Nazi ever existed. At least, when I went to Germany, I never met one. They were all feeling sorry for themselves and wanted me to feel sorry for them as well." In 1946, Argentine President Juan Perón began transforming Argentina into a one-party state with
1836-852: A private two-page suicide note to his wife, arranged part of the manuscript for The Pale King , and hanged himself on the back porch of his house in Claremont, California. Memorial gatherings were held at Pomona College, Amherst College, the University of Arizona, Illinois State University, and on October 23, 2008, at New York University (NYU). The eulogists at NYU included his sister, Amy Wallace-Havens; his literary agent, Bonnie Nadell; Gerry Howard , editor of his first two books; Colin Harrison , an editor at Harper's Magazine ; Michael Pietsch, editor of Infinite Jest and later works; Deborah Treisman, fiction editor at The New Yorker magazine; and
1944-546: A real Nazi might be like. I mean someone who thought of violence as being praiseworthy for its own sake. Then I thought that this archetype of the Nazis wouldn't mind being defeated; after all, defeats and victories are mere matters of chance. He would still be glad of the fact, even if the Americans and British won the war. Naturally, when I am with Nazis, I find they are not my idea of what a Nazi is, but this wasn't meant to be
2052-482: A relationship with writer Mary Karr . She later described Wallace as obsessive about her and said the relationship was volatile, with Wallace once throwing a coffee table at her as well as physically forcing her out of a car, leaving her to walk home. In 2018, she alleged that Wallace's biographer D. T. Max underreported Wallace's abuse. Of Max's account of their relationship, she tweeted: "That's about 2% of what happened." She said that Wallace kicked her, climbed up
2160-480: A single work. His writing comments on the fragmentation of thought, the relationship between happiness and boredom, and the psychological tension between the beauty and hideousness of the human body. According to Wallace, "fiction's about what it is to be a fucking human being", and he said he wanted to write "morally passionate, passionately moral fiction" that could help the reader "become less alone inside". In his Kenyon College commencement address, Wallace described
2268-576: A soldier of the Buenos Aires Army. A descendant of the Argentine lawyer and politician Francisco Narciso de Laprida , Acevedo Laprida fought in the battles of Cepeda in 1859, Pavón in 1861, and Los Corrales in 1880. Acevedo Laprida died of pulmonary congestion in the house where his grandson Jorge Luis Borges was born. According to a study by Antonio Andrade, Jorge Luis Borges had Portuguese ancestry: Borges's great-grandfather, Francisco,
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#17327721460152376-661: A stage play in 2000 by Dylan McCullough. This was the first theatrical adaptation of Wallace's work. The play, Hideous Men , was also directed by McCullough, and premiered at the New York International Fringe Festival in August 2000. Brief Interviews was also adapted by director Marc Caellas as a play, Brief Interviews with Hideous Writers , which premiered at Fundación Tomás Eloy Martinez in Buenos Aires on November 4, 2011. In 2012 it
2484-590: A tuxedo T-shirt while eating in the ship's dining room. The 2015 film The End of the Tour is based on conversations David Lipsky had with Wallace, transcribed in Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself (2010). Jason Segel played Wallace, and Jesse Eisenberg Lipsky. The film won an Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature at the Sarasota Film Festival , and Segel was nominated for
2592-776: A writer's duty is to be a writer, and if he can be a good writer, he is doing his duty. Besides, I think of my own opinions as being superficial. For example, I am a Conservative, I hate the Communists, I hate the Nazis, I hate the anti-Semites, and so on; but I don't allow these opinions to find their way into my writings—except, of course, when I was greatly elated about the Six-Day War . Generally speaking, I think of keeping them in watertight compartments. Everybody knows my opinions, but as for my dreams and my stories, they should be allowed their full freedom, I think. I don't want to intrude into them, I'm writing fiction, not fables." In
2700-522: Is a part) that enjoy any significant relation to the television whose weird, pretty hand has my generation by the throat. I'm going to argue that irony and ridicule are entertaining and effective, and that, at the same time, they are agents of a great despair and stasis in U.S. culture, and that, for aspiring fictionists, they pose terrifically vexing problems. Wallace used many forms of irony, but tended to focus on individual persons' continued longing for earnest, unself-conscious experience and communication in
2808-435: Is blindly collaborating with the inevitable armies that will annihilate him, as the metal vultures and the dragon (which must have known that they were monsters) collaborated, mysteriously, with Hercules ." In 1946, Borges published the short story " Deutsches Requiem ", which masquerades as the last testament of a condemned Nazi war criminal named Otto Dietrich zur Linde. In a 1971 conference at Columbia University , Borges
2916-589: Is likely to come from ancient Jewish descent, from a millennium ago. Both before and during the Second World War , Borges regularly published essays attacking the Nazi police state and its racist ideology. His outrage was fueled by his deep love for German literature . In an essay published in 1937, Borges attacked the Nazi Party's use of children's books to inflame antisemitism. He wrote, "I don't know if
3024-527: Is one of the biggest skate parks in Europe . 46°11′38″N 6°08′29″E / 46.19389°N 6.14139°E / 46.19389; 6.14139 This Canton of Geneva location article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Jorge Luis Borges Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo ( / ˈ b ɔːr h ɛ s / BOR -hess ; Spanish: [ˈxoɾxe ˈlwis ˈboɾxes] ; 24 August 1899 – 14 June 1986)
3132-490: Is presented to them ready-made. There are even agencies of the State that supply them with opinions, passwords, slogans, and even idols to exalt or cast down according to the prevailing wind or in keeping with the directives of the thinking heads of the single party ." In later years, Borges frequently expressed contempt for Marxist and communist authors, poets, and intellectuals. In an interview with Burgin, Borges referred to Chilean poet Pablo Neruda as "a very fine poet" but
3240-517: Is that you get to decide how you're going to try to see it. You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn't. ... The trick is keeping the truth up-front in daily consciousness. Wallace covered Senator John McCain 's 2000 presidential campaign and the September 11 attacks for Rolling Stone ; cruise ships (in what became the title essay of his first nonfiction book), state fairs , and tornadoes for Harper's Magazine ;
3348-500: Is the fact that they breed idiocy. Bellboys babbling orders, portraits of caudillos , prearranged cheers or insults, walls covered with names, unanimous ceremonies, mere discipline usurping the place of clear thinking ... Fighting these sad monotonies is one of the duties of a writer. Need I remind readers of Martín Fierro or Don Segundo that individualism is an old Argentine virtue. David Foster Wallace David Foster Wallace (February 21, 1962 – September 12, 2008)
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3456-537: Is tragedy there." In a 1967 interview with Burgin, Borges recalled how his interactions with Argentina's Nazi sympathisers led him to create the story. He recalled, "And then I realized that those people that were on the side of Germany, that they never thought of German victories or the German glory. What they really liked was the idea of the Blitzkrieg , of London being on fire, of the country being destroyed. As to
3564-586: The Aga Khan Prize for Fiction , awarded by editors of The Paris Review for one of the stories in Brief Interviews with Hideous Men , which had been published in the magazine. In 2002, Wallace moved to Claremont, California , to become the first Roy E. Disney endowed Professor of Creative Writing and Professor of English at Pomona College . He taught one or two undergraduate courses per semester and focused on writing. Wallace delivered
3672-563: The Imagists . His first poem, "Hymn to the Sea", written in the style of Walt Whitman , was published in the magazine Grecia . While in Spain, he met such noted Spanish writers as Rafael Cansinos Assens and Ramón Gómez de la Serna . In 1921, Borges returned with his family to Buenos Aires. He had little formal education, no qualifications and few friends. He wrote to a friend that Buenos Aires
3780-573: The Independent Spirit Award for Best Male Lead . "Partridge", a Season 5 episode of NBC 's Parks and Recreation , repeatedly references Infinite Jest , of which the show's co-creator, Michael Schur , is a noted fan. Schur also directed the music video for The Decemberists ' "Calamity Song", which depicts the Eschaton game from Infinite Jest. Twelve of the interviews from Brief Interviews with Hideous Men were adapted as
3888-624: The Los Angeles Times , The Washington Post , The New York Times , and The Philadelphia Inquirer . In the November 2007 issue of The Atlantic , which commemorated the magazine's 150th anniversary, Wallace was among the authors, artists, politicians and others who wrote short pieces on "the future of the American idea". These and other essays appear in three collections, A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again , Consider
3996-479: The Nazi Party , asserted Borges was secretly Jewish and by implication not truly Argentinian. Borges responded with the essay " Yo, Judío " ("I, a Jew"), a reference to the old phrase "Yo, Argentino" ("I, an Argentine") uttered by potential victims during pogroms against Argentine Jews to signify one was not Jewish. In the essay, Borges declares he would be proud to be a Jew, and remarks that any pure Castilian
4104-555: The Quixote ," came out in May 1939. One of his most famous works, "Menard" examines the nature of authorship, as well as the relationship between an author and his historical context. His first collection of short stories, El jardín de senderos que se bifurcan ( The Garden of Forking Paths ), appeared in 1941, composed mostly of works previously published in Sur . The title story concerns
4212-561: The Shinto beliefs of her father or the Catholicism of her mother. Kodama "had always regarded Borges as an Agnostic, as she was herself", but given the insistence of his questioning, she offered to call someone more "qualified". Borges responded, "You are asking me if I want a priest." He then instructed her to call two clergymen, a Catholic priest, in memory of his mother, and a Protestant minister, in memory of his English grandmother. He
4320-522: The US Open tournament for Tennis magazine; Roger Federer for The New York Times ; the director David Lynch and the pornography industry for Première magazine; the tennis player Michael Joyce for Esquire ; the movie-special-effects industry for Waterstone's magazine; conservative talk radio host John Ziegler for The Atlantic ; and a Maine lobster festival for Gourmet magazine. He also reviewed books in several genres for
4428-500: The University of Virginia (UVA) in the U.S. influenced a group of students among whom was Jared Loewenstein, who would later become founder and curator of the Jorge Luis Borges Collection at UVA, one of the largest repositories of documents and manuscripts pertaining to Borges's early works. In 1984, he travelled to Athens, Greece, and later to Rethymnon, Crete, where he was awarded an honorary doctorate from
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4536-503: The fantasy genre, and have had a major influence on the magic realist movement in 20th century Latin American literature . Born in Buenos Aires , Borges later moved with his family to Switzerland in 1914, where he studied at the Collège de Genève . The family travelled widely in Europe, including Spain. On his return to Argentina in 1921, Borges began publishing his poems and essays in surrealist literary journals. He also worked as
4644-514: The irony and metafiction associated with postmodernism and explore a post-postmodern or metamodern style. In the essay "E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction" (written 1990, published 1993), he proposed that television has an ironic influence on fiction, and urged literary authors to eschew TV's shallow rebelliousness: I want to convince you that irony, poker-faced silence, and fear of ridicule are distinctive of those features of contemporary U.S. culture (of which cutting-edge fiction
4752-519: The phenomenology of Husserl and Heidegger . In this vein, Borges biographer Edwin Williamson underlines the danger of inferring an autobiographically inspired basis for the content or tone of certain of his works: books, philosophy, and imagination were as much a source of real inspiration to him as his own lived experience, if not more so. From the first issue, Borges was a regular contributor to Sur , founded in 1931 by Victoria Ocampo . It
4860-562: The "reparation" project. With his vision beginning to fade in his early thirties and unable to support himself as a writer, Borges began a new career as a public lecturer. He became an increasingly public figure, obtaining appointments as president of the Argentine Society of Writers and as professor of English and American Literature at the Argentine Association of English Culture. His short story " Emma Zunz "
4968-486: The 1920s and 1930s, Borges was a vocal supporter of Hipólito Yrigoyen and the social democratic Radical Civic Union . In 1945, Borges signed a manifesto calling for an end to military rule and the establishment of political liberty and democratic elections. By the 1960s, he had grown more skeptical of democracy. During a 1971 conference at Columbia University , a creative writing student asked Borges what he regarded as "a writer's duty to his time". Borges replied, "I think
5076-553: The 1980s, towards the end of his life, Borges regained his earlier faith in democracy and held it out as the only hope for Argentina. In 1983, Borges applauded the election of the Radical Civic Union's Raúl Alfonsín and welcomed the end of military rule with the following words: "I once wrote that democracy is the abuse of statistics ... On October 30, 1983, Argentine democracy refuted me splendidly. Splendidly and resoundingly." Borges recurrently declared himself
5184-849: The American translator Norman Thomas di Giovanni , through whom he became better known in the English-speaking world. Di Giovanni contended that Borges's popularity was due to his writing with multiple languages in mind and deliberately using Latin words as a bridge from Spanish to English. Borges continued to publish books, among them El libro de los seres imaginarios ( Book of Imaginary Beings , 1967, co-written with Margarita Guerrero ), El informe de Brodie ( Dr. Brodie's Report , 1970), and El libro de arena ( The Book of Sand , 1975 ). He lectured prolifically. Many of these lectures were anthologized in volumes such as Siete noches ( Seven Nights ) and Nueve ensayos dantescos ( Nine Dantesque Essays ). His presence in 1967 on campus at
5292-546: The Buenos Aires newspaper Crítica ), where he first published the pieces collected as Historia universal de la infamia ( A Universal History of Infamy ) in 1935. The book includes two types of writing: the first lies somewhere between non-fiction essays and short stories, using fictional techniques to tell essentially true stories. The second consists of literary forgeries, which Borges initially passed off as translations of passages from famous but seldom-read works. In
5400-526: The Church the forgiveness of his sins". After the funeral, Borges was laid to rest in Geneva's Cimetière de Plainpalais . His grave, marked by a rough-hewn headstone, is adorned with carvings derived from Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse art and literature. Maria Kodama, his widow and heir on the basis of the marriage and two wills, gained control over his works. Her assertive administration of his estate resulted in
5508-413: The German fighters, they took no stock in them. Then I thought, well now Germany has lost, now America has saved us from this nightmare, but since nobody can doubt on which side I stood, I'll see what can be done from a literary point of view in favor of the Nazis. And then I created the ideal Nazi." At Columbia University in 1971, Borges further elaborated on the story's creation, "I tried to imagine what
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#17327721460155616-677: The Holy Trinity. This world is so strange that anything may happen, or may not happen." Borges was taught to read the Bible by his English Protestant grandmother and he prayed the Our Father each night because of a promise he made to his mother. He also died in the presence of a priest. During his final days in Geneva, Borges began brooding about the possibility of an afterlife . Although calm and collected about his own death, Borges began probing Kodama as to whether she inclined more towards
5724-655: The Lobster and the posthumous Both Flesh and Not , the last of which contains some of Wallace's earliest work, including his first published essay, "Fictional Futures and the Conspicuously Young". Wallace's tennis writing was compiled into a volume titled String Theory: David Foster Wallace on Tennis , published in 2016. Some writers have found parts of Wallace's nonfiction implausible. Jonathan Franzen has said that he believes Wallace made up dialogue and incidents: "those things didn't actually happen". Of
5832-569: The Party in this matter ultimately led to a permanent rift with his longtime lover, Argentine Communist Estela Canto . In a 1956 interview given to El Hogar , Borges stated that "[Communists] are in favor of totalitarian regimes and systematically combat freedom of thought, oblivious of the fact that the principal victims of dictatorships are, precisely, intelligence and culture." He elaborated: "Many people are in favor of dictatorships because they allow them to avoid thinking for themselves. Everything
5940-481: The School of Philosophy at the University of Crete . In the mid-1960s, Borges became acquainted with Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the future Pope Francis , who was at the time a young Jesuit priest. In 1979, Borges spoke appreciatively and at some length about Bergoglio to the Argentine poet and essayist Roberto Alifano. In 1967, Borges married the recently widowed Elsa Astete Millán. Friends believed that his mother, who
6048-549: The System (1987) garnered national attention and critical praise. In The New York Times , Caryn James called it a "manic, human, flawed extravaganza ... emerging straight from the excessive tradition of Stanley Elkin 's The Franchiser , Thomas Pynchon 's V. , [and] John Irving 's World According to Garp ". In 1991, Wallace began teaching literature as an adjunct professor at Emerson College in Boston. The next year, at
6156-413: The System (1987), and committed to being a writer. He told David Lipsky : "Writing The Broom of the System , I felt like I was using 97 percent of me, whereas philosophy was using 50 percent." Wallace completed a Master of Fine Arts degree in creative writing at the University of Arizona in 1987. He moved to Massachusetts to attend graduate school in philosophy at Harvard University , but soon left
6264-550: The Tinker Chair. This led to his first lecture tour in the United States. In 1962, two major anthologies of Borges's writings were published in English by New York presses: Ficciones and Labyrinths . In that year, Borges began lecture tours of Europe. Numerous honors were to accumulate over the years such as a Special Edgar Allan Poe Award from the Mystery Writers of America "for distinguished contribution to
6372-654: The United States and Europe. Borges himself was fluent in several languages. In 1961, Borges came to international attention when he received the first Formentor Prize , which he shared with Samuel Beckett . In 1971, he won the Jerusalem Prize . His international reputation was consolidated in the 1960s, aided by the growing number of English translations, the Latin American Boom , and by the success of García Márquez 's One Hundred Years of Solitude . He dedicated his final work, The Conspirators , to
6480-467: The album A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships by The 1975 , borrows its title from the opening line of Infinite Jest . Matty Healy , The 1975's lead singer, said in an interview with Pitchfork that he was inspired by the novel after reading it during a stint in rehabilitation: I was reading [ Infinite Jest ] when I was in rehab. There was no one there. It was me and my nurses, who'd come in and check on me, and then Angela [the protagonist of
6588-489: The assistance of his wife, Evita . Almost immediately, the spoils system was the rule of the day, as ideological critics of the ruling Partido Justicialista were fired from government jobs. During this period, Borges was informed that he was being "promoted" from his position at the Miguel Cané Library to a post as inspector of poultry and rabbits at the Buenos Aires municipal market. Upon demanding to know
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#17327721460156696-466: The attempt", despite the 1921 opus El caudillo . Jorge Luis Borges wrote, "As most of my people had been soldiers and I knew I would never be, I felt ashamed, quite early, to be a bookish kind of person and not a man of action." Jorge Luis Borges was taught at home until the age of 11 and was bilingual in Spanish and English, reading Shakespeare in the latter at the age of twelve. The family lived in
6804-431: The city of Geneva , Switzerland. Writer and essayist J. M. Coetzee said of him: "He, more than anyone, renovated the language of fiction and thus opened the way to a remarkable generation of Spanish-American novelists." David Foster Wallace wrote: "The truth, briefly stated, is that Borges is arguably the great bridge between modernism and post-modernism in world literature. He is modernist in that his fiction shows
6912-462: The commencement address to the 2005 graduating class at Kenyon College . The speech was published as a book, This Is Water , in 2009. In May 2013, parts of the speech were used in a popular online video, also titled "This Is Water". Bonnie Nadell was Wallace's literary agent during his entire career. Michael Pietsch was his editor on Infinite Jest . Wallace died in 2008. In March 2009, Little, Brown and Company announced that it would publish
7020-444: The early 1960s. In 1961, Borges received the first Prix International , which he shared with Samuel Beckett . While Beckett had garnered a distinguished reputation in Europe and America, Borges had been largely unknown and untranslated in the English-speaking world and the prize stirred great interest in his work. The Italian government named Borges Commendatore and the University of Texas at Austin appointed him for one year to
7128-676: The essays "Shipping Out" and "Ticket to the Fair", John Cook has remarked that in Wallace's nonfiction: Wallace encounters pitch-perfect characters who speak comedically crystalline lines and place him in hilariously absurd situations...I used both stories [when teaching journalism] as examples of the inescapable temptation to shave, embellish, and invent narratives. Wallace's father said that David had suffered from major depressive disorder for more than 20 years and that antidepressant medication had allowed him to be productive. Wallace suffered what
7236-648: The family resided in Palermo , then a poorer neighborhood. Borges's mother, Leonor Acevedo Suárez , worked as a translator and came from a family of criollo (Spanish) origin. Her family had been much involved in the European settling of South America and the Argentine War of Independence , and she spoke often of their heroic actions. His 1929 book Cuaderno San Martín includes the poem "Isidoro Acevedo", commemorating his grandfather, Isidoro de Acevedo Laprida,
7344-404: The first Borges stories to be translated into English, appeared in the August 1948 issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine , translated by Anthony Boucher . Though several other Borges translations appeared in literary magazines and anthologies during the 1950s (and one story appeared in the fantasy and science fiction magazine Fantastic Universe in 1960), his international fame dates from
7452-639: The following year he received the National Prize for Literature. From 1956 to 1970, Borges also held a position as a professor of literature at the University of Buenos Aires and other temporary appointments at other universities. He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1964. In the fall of 1967 and spring of 1968, he delivered the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures at Harvard University . As his eyesight deteriorated, Borges relied increasingly on his mother's help. When he
7560-572: The following years, he served as a literary adviser for the publishing house Emecé Editores , and from 1936 to 1939 wrote weekly columns for El Hogar . In 1938, Borges found work as the first assistant at the Miguel Cané Municipal Library. It was in a working-class area and there were so few books that cataloging more than one hundred books per day, he was told, would leave little to do for the other staff and would make them look bad. The task took him about an hour each day and
7668-458: The human condition as daily crises and chronic disillusionment and warned against succumbing to solipsism , invoking the existential values of compassion and mindfulness: The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day. ... The only thing that's capital-T True
7776-580: The individual should be strong and the State should be weak. I couldn't be enthusiastic about theories where the State is more important than the individual." After the overthrow via coup d'état of President Juan Domingo Perón in 1955, Borges supported efforts to purge Argentina's Government of Peronists and dismantle the former President's welfare state. He was enraged that the Communist Party of Argentina opposed these measures and sharply criticized them in lectures and in print. Borges's opposition to
7884-562: The journals Prisma , a broadsheet distributed largely by pasting copies to walls in Buenos Aires, and Proa . Later in life, Borges regretted some of these early publications, attempting to purchase all known copies to ensure their destruction. By the mid-1930s, he began to explore existential questions and fiction. He worked in a style that Argentine critic Ana María Barrenechea has called "irreality." Many other Latin American writers, such as Juan Rulfo , Juan José Arreola , and Alejo Carpentier , were investigating these themes, influenced by
7992-559: The manuscript of an unfinished novel, The Pale King , that Wallace had been working on before his death. Pietsch pieced the novel together from pages and notes Wallace left behind. Several excerpts were published in The New Yorker and other magazines. The Pale King was published on April 15, 2011, and received generally positive reviews. Michiko Kakutani of The New York Times wrote that The Pale King "showcases [Wallace's] embrace of discontinuity; his fascination with both
8100-639: The meta and the microscopic, postmodern pyrotechnics and old-fashioned storytelling; and his ongoing interest in contemporary America's obsession with self-gratification and entertainment." The book was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. Throughout his career, Wallace published short fiction in periodicals such as The New Yorker , GQ , Harper's Magazine , Playboy , The Paris Review , Mid-American Review , Conjunctions , Esquire , Open City , Puerto del Sol , and Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern . Wallace wanted to progress beyond
8208-609: The most influential and innovative writers of the last twenty years". Wallace grew up in Illinois and attended Amherst College . He taught English at Emerson College , Illinois State University , and Pomona College . After struggling with depression for many years, he died by suicide in 2008, at age 46. David Foster Wallace was born in Ithaca, New York , to Sally Jean Wallace ( née Foster) and James Donald Wallace . The family moved to Champaign-Urbana, Illinois , where he
8316-703: The mystery genre" (1976), the Balzan Prize (for Philology, Linguistics and literary Criticism) and the Prix mondial Cino Del Duca , the Miguel de Cervantes Prize (all 1980), as well as the French Legion of Honour (1983) and the Diamond Konex Award for Literature Arts as the most important writer in the last decade in his country. In 1967, Borges began a five-year period of collaboration with
8424-453: The name of restoring their national honour. Such use of children's books for propaganda he writes, "perfect the criminal arts of barbarians." In a 1944 essay, Borges postulated, Nazism suffers from unreality, like Erigena 's hell. It is uninhabitable; men can only die for it, lie for it, wound and kill for it. No one, in the intimate depths of his being, can wish it to triumph. I shall risk this conjecture: Hitler wants to be defeated . Hitler
8532-399: The painter Norah Borges , sister of Jorge Luis Borges. At age ten, Jorge Luis Borges translated Oscar Wilde 's The Happy Prince into Spanish. It was published in a local journal, but Borges's friends thought the real author was his father. Borges Haslam was a lawyer and psychology teacher who harboured literary aspirations. Borges said his father "tried to become a writer and failed in
8640-465: The program. In 2002, Wallace met the painter Karen L. Green , whom he married on December 27, 2004. Wallace struggled with depression, alcoholism, drug addiction, and suicidal tendencies, and was repeatedly hospitalized for psychiatric care. In 1989, he spent four weeks at McLean Hospital —a psychiatric institute in Belmont, Massachusetts , affiliated with Harvard Medical School—where he completed
8748-546: The reason, Borges was told, "Well, you were on the side of the Allies, what do you expect?" Borges resigned the following day. Perón's treatment of Borges became a cause célèbre for the Argentine intelligentsia. The Argentine Society of Writers (SADE) held a formal dinner in his honour. At the dinner, a speech was read which Borges had written for the occasion. It said: Dictatorships breed oppression, dictatorships breed servility, dictatorships breed cruelty; more loathsome still
8856-452: The rest of his time he spent in the basement of the library, writing and translating. Borges's father died in 1938, shortly before his 64th birthday. On Christmas Eve that year, Borges had a severe head injury; during treatment, he nearly died of sepsis . While recovering from the accident, Borges began exploring a new style of writing for which he would become famous. His first story written after his accident, " Pierre Menard, Author of
8964-526: The side of her house at night, and followed her five-year-old son home from school. Wallace also attempted to buy a gun to kill Karr's ex-husband. In a 2015 NPR interview, Karr stated that, "I'm not the only woman [Wallace] was violent with. It was, it's common knowledge among women who dated him, you know, that he was violent." Since publicizing Wallace's abuse, Karr says women have contacted her to share stories of Wallace hiting, lying, and preying on them, including former students of Wallace. The Broom of
9072-530: The suggestion of colleague and supporter Steven Moore , Wallace obtained a position in the English department at Illinois State University . He had begun work on his second novel, Infinite Jest , in 1991, and submitted a draft to his editor in December 1993. After the publication of excerpts throughout 1995, the book was published in 1996. In 1997, Wallace received a MacArthur Fellowship . He also received
9180-401: The translations by Norman Thomas di Giovanni , in which Borges himself collaborated, and from which di Giovanni would have received an unusually high fifty percent of the royalties. Kodama commissioned new translations by Andrew Hurley , which have become the official translations in English. At the time of her death, Kodama left no will and the status of the Borges estate is in limbo. During
9288-510: The war. After World War I , the family spent three years living in various cities: Lugano , Barcelona, Majorca , Seville, and Madrid. They remained in Europe until 1921. At that time, Borges discovered the writings of Arthur Schopenhauer and Gustav Meyrink 's The Golem (1915), which became influential to his work. In Spain, Borges became a member of the avant-garde , anti- Modernismo Ultraist literary movement, inspired by Guillaume Apollinaire and Filippo Tommaso Marinetti , close to
9396-452: The world can do without German civilization, but I do know that its corruption by the teachings of hatred is a crime." In a 1938 essay, Borges reviewed an anthology which rewrote German authors of the past to fit the Nazi party line. He was disgusted by what he described as Germany's "chaotic descent into darkness" and the attendant rewriting of history. He argued that such books sacrificed the German people's culture, history and integrity in
9504-633: The writers Don DeLillo , Zadie Smith , George Saunders , Mark Costello, Donald Antrim , and Jonathan Franzen . In March 2010, it was announced that Wallace's personal papers and archives—drafts of books, stories, essays, poems, letters, and research, including the handwritten notes for Infinite Jest —had been purchased by the University of Texas at Austin . They are held at that university's Harry Ransom Center . Since 2011, Loyola University New Orleans has offered English seminar courses on Wallace. Similar courses have also been taught at Harvard University . The first David Foster Wallace Conference
9612-444: Was 90 and anticipating her own death, wanted to find someone to care for her blind son. The marriage lasted less than three years. After a legal separation, Borges moved back in with his mother, with whom he lived until her death at age 99. Thereafter, he lived alone in the small flat he had shared with her, cared for by Fanny, their housekeeper of many decades. From 1975 until the time of his death, Borges traveled internationally. He
9720-537: Was a man who had unceasingly searched for the right word, the term that could sum up the whole, the final meaning of things." He said, however, that no man can reach that word through his own efforts and in trying becomes lost in a labyrinth. Pastor de Montmollin concluded, "It is not man who discovers the word, it is the Word that comes to him." Father Jacquet also preached, saying that, when visiting Borges before his death, he had found "a man full of love, who received from
9828-814: Was a regionally ranked junior tennis player. He wrote about this period in the essay "Derivative Sport in Tornado Alley", originally published in Harper's Magazine as "Tennis, Trigonometry, Tornadoes". Although his parents were atheists , Wallace twice attempted to join the Catholic Church , but "flunk[ed] the period of inquiry". He later attended a Mennonite church. Wallace attended Amherst College , his father's alma mater, where he majored in English and philosophy and graduated summa cum laude in 1985. Among other extracurricular activities, he participated in glee club ; his sister recalls that he "had
9936-524: Was adapted as a play by artist Andy Holden for a two-night run at the ICA in London. The short story "Tri-Stan: I Sold Sissee Nar to Ecko", from Brief Interviews with Hideous Men , was adapted by composer Eric Moe into a 50-minute operatic piece, to be performed with accompanying video projections. The piece was described as having "subversively inscribed classical music into pop culture". Infinite Jest
10044-493: Was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and university professor of English and creative writing . Wallace's 1996 novel Infinite Jest was cited by Time magazine as one of the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to 2005. His posthumous novel, The Pale King (2011), was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2012. The Los Angeles Times ' s David Ulin called Wallace "one of
10152-595: Was an Argentine short-story writer , essayist, poet and translator regarded as a key figure in Spanish-language and international literature. His best-known works, Ficciones ( transl. Fictions ) and El Aleph ( transl. The Aleph ), published in the 1940s, are collections of short stories exploring motifs such as dreams , labyrinths , chance , infinity , archives , mirrors , fictional writers and mythology . Borges's works have contributed to philosophical literature and
10260-501: Was asked about the story by a student from the creative writing program. He recalled, "When the Germans were defeated I felt great joy and relief, but at the same time I thought of the German defeat as being somehow tragic, because here we have perhaps the most educated people in Europe, who have a fine literature, a fine tradition of philosophy and poetry. Yet these people were bamboozled by a madman named Adolf Hitler , and I think there
10368-478: Was believed to be a severe interaction of the medication with the food he had eaten one day at a restaurant, and in June 2007, on his doctor's advice, he stopped taking phenelzine , his primary antidepressant drug. His depression recurred, and he tried other treatments, including electroconvulsive therapy . Eventually he went back on phenelzine but found it ineffective. On September 12, 2008, at age 46, Wallace wrote
10476-786: Was born in Portugal in 1770, and lived in Torre de Moncorvo , in the north of the country, before he emigrated to Argentina, where he married Cármen Lafinur. Borges's own father, Jorge Guillermo Borges Haslam , was a lawyer and wrote the novel El caudillo in 1921. Borges Haslam was born in Entre Ríos of Spanish, Portuguese, and English descent, the son of Francisco Borges Lafinur, a colonel, and Frances Ann Haslam, an Englishwoman. Borges Haslam grew up speaking English at home. The family frequently traveled to Europe. Borges Haslam wedded Leonor Acevedo Suárez in 1898 and their children also included
10584-1058: Was hosted by the Illinois State University Department of English in May 2014; the second was held in May 2015. In January 2017, the International David Foster Wallace Society and the Journal of David Foster Wallace Studies were launched. Among the writers who have cited Wallace as an influence are Dave Eggers , Jonathan Franzen , Rivka Galchen , Matthew Gallaway , David Gordon , John Green , Porochista Khakpour , George Saunders , Michael Schur , Zadie Smith , Darin Strauss , Deb Olin Unferth , Elizabeth Wurtzel , and Charles Yu . A feature-length film adaptation of Brief Interviews with Hideous Men , directed by John Krasinski with an ensemble cast,
10692-579: Was made into a film (under the name of Días de odio , Days of Hate , directed in 1954 by Leopoldo Torre Nilsson ). Around this time, Borges also began writing screenplays. In 1955, he became director of the Argentine National Library. By the late 1950s he had become completely blind. Neither the coincidence nor the irony of his blindness as a writer escaped Borges: Nadie rebaje a lágrima o reproche esta declaración de la maestría de Dios, que con magnífica ironía me dio
10800-492: Was not able to read and write anymore (he never learned to read Braille ), his mother, to whom he had always been close, became his personal secretary. When Perón returned from exile and was re-elected president in 1973, Borges immediately resigned as director of the National Library. Eight of Borges's poems appear in the 1943 anthology of Spanish American Poets by H. R. Hays. "The Garden of Forking Paths", one of
10908-409: Was now "overrun by arrivistes, by correct youths lacking any mental equipment, and decorative young ladies". He brought with him the doctrine of Ultraism and launched his career, publishing surreal poems and essays in literary journals. In 1923, Borges first published his poetry, a collection called Fervor de Buenos Aires , and contributed to the avant-garde review Martín Fierro . Borges co-founded
11016-658: Was often accompanied in these travels by his personal assistant María Kodama , an Argentine woman of Japanese and German ancestry. In April 1986, a few months before his death, he married her via an attorney in Paraguay , in what was then a common practice among Argentines wishing to circumvent the Argentine laws of the time regarding divorce. According to Kodama, Borges drank as a young man, but eventually gave up alcohol as he aged and "felt more secure." On his religious views, Borges declared himself an agnostic, clarifying: "Being an agnostic means all things are possible, even God, even
11124-508: Was performed once as a stage play by Germany's experimental theater Hebbel am Ufer . The play was staged in various locations throughout Berlin , and the action took place over a 24-hour period. "Good Old Neon", from Oblivion: Stories , was adapted and performed by Ian Forester at the 2011 Hollywood Fringe Festival , produced by the Los Angeles independent theater company Needtheater. The song "Surrounded by Heads and Bodies", from
11232-673: Was raised along with his younger sister, Amy Wallace-Havens. His father was a philosophy professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign . His mother was an English professor at Parkland College , a community college in Champaign, which recognized her work with a "Professor of the Year" award in 1996. From fourth grade, Wallace lived with his family in Urbana , where he attended Yankee Ridge Elementary School, Brookens Junior High School and Urbana High School . As an adolescent, Wallace
11340-481: Was released in 2009 and premiered at the Sundance Film Festival . The 19th episode of the 23rd season of The Simpsons , " A Totally Fun Thing That Bart Will Never Do Again " (2012), is loosely based on Wallace's essay "Shipping Out" from his 1997 collection, A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again . The Simpson family takes a cruise, and Wallace appears in the background of a scene, wearing
11448-415: Was then Argentina's most important literary journal and helped Borges find his fame. Ocampo introduced Borges to Adolfo Bioy Casares , another well-known figure of Argentine literature who was to become a frequent collaborator and close friend. They wrote a number of works together, some under the nom de plume H. Bustos Domecq , including a parody detective series and fantasy stories. During these years,
11556-616: Was treated by an eye specialist, while his son and daughter attended school. Jorge Luis learned French, read Thomas Carlyle in English, and began to read philosophy in German. In 1917, when he was eighteen, he met writer Maurice Abramowicz and began a literary friendship that lasted for the remainder of his life. He received his baccalauréat from the Collège de Genève in 1918. The Borges family decided that, due to political unrest in Argentina, they would remain in Switzerland during
11664-539: Was visited first by Father Pierre Jacquet and by Pastor Edouard de Montmollin. Borges died of liver cancer on 14 June 1986, aged 86, in Geneva. His burial was preceded by an ecumenical service at the Protestant Cathédrale de Saint Pierre on 18 June. With many Swiss and Argentine dignitaries present, Pastor de Montmollin read the First Chapter of St John's Gospel . He then preached that "Borges
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