* Borges finds his Boswell: Adolfo Bioy Casares's 1600-page diary is reviewed at TLS.
Adolfo Bioy Casares had his first conversation with Jorge Luis Borges in 1931 or 1932, when Bioy was about eighteen and Borges was thirty-two. From then on they enjoyed an extraordinarily intense literary friendship which lasted until Borges’s death in 1986. In 1947 Bioy started to write a diary, in which he recorded the often daily conversations that make up this gargantuan book. The diary clearly covered many other topics, and they are tantalizingly referred to by Daniel Martino, the editor of Borges, in a short, unilluminating preface. Martino says that “Bioy’s diaries open up a vast universe where his notes on his conversations with Borges coexist with his writings on everyday life and his frequent examinations of matters of conduct”. Martino seems to have had exclusive access to this material, but he does not tell us where the rest of it is, which is a pity because Bioy is a considerable writer in his own right, even if many critics still see him first and foremost as Borges’s friend, and collaborator in numerous stories and satires which they jointly wrote under the pseudonyms of H. Bustos Domecq and B. Suárez Lynch.
* The storySouth 2007 Million Writers Award for Fiction has gone to Catherynne M. Valente for her short story Urchins, While Swimming.
* Andrew Motion has called for new tax breaks to allow literary manuscripts to remain in the UK. ]
The writer has expressed concerns that work by figures including Tom Stoppard, Ted Hughes and Evelyn Waugh is being snapped up by US institutions.
Professor Motion told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that there are "magical and meaningful" reasons to preserve original documents for the nation.
* Maud Newton alerts us to an excerpt of J.M. Coetzee's forthcoming novel.
* How interesting, in the coverage of Sir Salman's impending divorce, to note Wylie Agency literary agent Jin Auh referred to as Rushdie's "spokeswoman." But this bit's the real "ouch":
When the Indian-born Rushdie started his romance with the model more than 20 years his junior, the tabloids made much of their differences in age and intellectual stature.
* Another Mohsin Hamid profile, this one for the BBC.
* Jan Nathan, a champion of small, independent book publishers and the founding executive director of the Independent Book Publishers Association, has died.
* A.L. Kennedy is the subject of the Independent's latest Five-Minute Interview.
* Martha Southgate's essay about the struggles of writers of African American fiction, and the continuing discussion at Tayari Jones's website deserve your attention.
* And, finally - see? And we thought only literature and book reviews were dying.
First Heather Mills, now Padma! Top Chef must really be taking off for Padma to dump Sir Salman. If only there were a show like that for writers. Maybe with n+1 and TEV as bickering judges. What drama it would be when the normally fair-minded TEV goes limbic after an aspiring contestant uses the word "limn". "You lemming of limn! I'm going to tear you limb from limb!" "What'd I do?! What'd I do?! Oh god, please tell me what I did!"
Posted by: Jason | July 03, 2007 at 10:09 AM
Yesterday, in www.borgesdebioycasares.com.ar I read Martino´s witty answer to Gallagher. Btw, there can be found also a mammouth Analytical Index (130 pages) to Bioy Casares´ BORGES.
Posted by: Estela Kerbaum | August 15, 2007 at 09:57 PM