…there were neither defeats nor victories nor even an open encounter…”
For the sake of proportion, I will post the response of one N.T. di Giovanni to this post, in which I quoted a portion of a letter Marian Skedgell (who is now or once was apparently an editor at Dutton) wrote to the Atlantic. Ms. Skedgell asserted, among other things, that Maria Kodama “now regards Di Giovanni as a thief who stole thousands of dollars from her estate.” Given that that bit was front-paged here, I think it is only right to front-page the response:
I had never before seen Marian Skedgell’s Atlantic letter. I had never before known that Maria Kodama thinks I stole money from Borges or from her. Talk of throwing the stone and hiding the hand. I am sorry to say that Kodama is ignorant of all that took place between others and Borges before she came along. By sheer coincidence, just this morning I came across some old correspondence dealing with the royalty divisions of The Book of Imaginary Beings. Among the vast library of things that Kodama does not know is that I doubled Dutton’s original offer for the book back in 1968. At the time, Borges was so uninterested in money that he did not even bother to tell me what his financial relations were with his co-author Margarita Guerrero. There is far more to tell, all documented, but I have miles to go before I sleep.
Tags: books, Borges, di Giovanni
I’m very interested now in finding out more about Margarita Guerrero — I had forgotten that Borges had a co-author for Imaginary Beings; and I see she was also involved in writing his book on Martiín Fierro.
Can it possibly be the case that the book of essays on the Martín Fierro is not translated? That would seem weird to me.
Unfortunate, yes, but the cynic in me would conclude that someone in some publisher’s marketing dept. made a sound call. One would assume that the Borges name on the cover is good for at least 5000 sales, though.
Yeah I guess you’re right. Know what I’d like to see? Bilingual edition of the poem with the essays in back. I’d totally buy one of those. (Actually, well, the poem is translated and I assume it’s been published in a bilingual edition somewhere…)
I’d settle for more film reviews. I was about to whine about more of his essays not being in English translation, only to run across for a penny “Borges In/And/on Film” compiled by Cozarinsky and published Lumen Books in 1988. Mine!
Still reading Bolano’s 2666, and still mildly surprised, despite all of the reviews that i’ve read, to find how many film references are used, especially “The Part About Fate.” I didn’t take the reviewers’ words seriously enough. It’s saturated.
Off-topic but want to know what Brazilian film I started watching last night only to discover that it was way too heavy for the frame of mind I was in, but am planning to return to tomorrow because it is (if the first 15 minutes are any indication) such a magnificently good film? City of God is what.
A penny?!?!!
/%$#&
(plus $3.99 shipping)
Waiting to rewatch City of God. Enjoyed it enough to buy it, but wondering if i was just caught up in the hype. Will re-watch it this week.
Portugal dedicated a monument to Borges on Friday — Kadama was there as was Saramago, who said “There are worlds which have existed since the moment [Borges] created them.”
BTW badger, did you read City of God? I’ve put it on my list for this year, assuming (a) it’s been translated and (b) it is available. Those characters seemed really interesting to me but the graphic violence stood in the way of my really getting inside them, (and also, well, the language barrier posed some difficulty as well) I think it would be easier to do with a book.
I mean “Kodama”.