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"An Examination of the Work of Herbert Quain", by Jorge Luis Borges, is a short story in the form of four reviews of four books that don't exist. So what you're reading right now is a review of a review. Actually, Borges sometimes reviews reviews in the story, so this is also a review of a review of a review. And if you were to review this blog post, that would be a review of a... well, you get it.
These reviews are incredibly fun to read. The reviewer describes the four nonexistent books with such vivid, skillful prose that you can't help but want to read them. One's prologue "evokes the inverse world of Bradley in which death precedes birth, the scar the wound, and the wound the blow"; another is "highly diverse, but also retrospective." But the reviewer is not full of effusive praise: in the first, he notes "the vain and frigid pomp of certain descriptions of the sea", and of the last he simultaneously lauds and laments "a good plot, deliberately frustrated by the author".
Borges' deep knowledge and mastery of his craft is on full display here, and he gets to employ those skills in ways both literal and literary: he's telling you about deficiencies in prose at the same time he's demonstrating his aplomb with prose. He's evaluating intricate plot constructions even as he's enveloping you in one. It's mesmerizing to read a great writer's thoughts on writing for the same reason it's mesmerizing to watch to a master chef showing how to prepare a gourmet meal, or hear a painter's breakdown of a blending technique. Mastery is an enigma, and these moments allow us to glimpse it -- but only glimpse, because the talent and effort required for this kind of mastery means most of us will never touch it directly.
Now, if that were the end of the premise, that would already be a great short story. You'd be forgiven for thinking Borges was merely great, but in fact, what he manages to achieve in "An Examination of the Work of Herbert Quain" is even more subtle and ingenius. Because after I'd finished reading the story -- while I was sitting there, missing the nonexistence of these four nonexistent works by a nonexistent author, wishing I had the opportunity to have these literary experiences, I realized I had just had them. Even as Borges enthralls the reader with descriptions of amazing, labyrinthine journeys of the imagination, he's secretly taking the reader on those very journeys. And all in just four pages.*
*There
is a breathtaking elegance of language here -- Borges
really is the God of the Labyrinth. Indeed, while writing this review, I
was afraid it would be longer than the story itself. I abated these
concerns by leaving a lot of stuff out.
The first non-book by the titular Quain, The God of the Labyrinth, is a murder mystery in the vein of Agatha Christie. The mystery is first difficult, eventually resolved: "An indecipherable assassination takes place... a solution takes place in the end." But after the solution, there's another sentence in the book, a sentence which causes the reader to realize that "the solution is erroneous. The unquiet reader rereads the pertinent chapters and discovers another solution, the true one. The reader of this singular book is thus forcibly more discerning than the detective."
This plot is a secret mirror of my experience reading "An Examination of the Work of Herbert Quain". I initially thought it was going to be some fun book reviews, premises Borges never got to realize. It's only after I read the last sentence that I realized what Borges was doing was not so simple. In other words, my original conception of the story was erroneous. Thus unquieted, I reread the the pertinent chapters and discovered another solution, the true one: that Borges actually did realize all his premises, and he did so in the very story I had just read. My second reading was thus forcibly more discerning than my second. My review of my experience was, in a way, more real than the experience itself.
The final sentence of "An Examination of the Work of Herbert Quain" reveals the unnamed reviewer of Herbert Quain's work is none other than Borges. Apparently, reading Quain is what inspired Borges to write his story "The Circular Ruins". But this characterization is a total lie, because Quain isn't real. Borges made him up for this story. Plus, "An Examination of the Work of Herbert Quain" was written after "The Circular Ruins", so the timeline doesn't even line up. Hence, in the real world, "An Examination of the Work of Herbert Quain" possesses a retrograde chronology.
This chronology is precisely captured in the second book reviewed, April March. The title is already indicative of the backwards perspective. Borges writes, "In judging this novel, no one would fail to discover that it is a game; it is only fair to remember that the author never considered it anything else." One wonders which author Borges is referring to.
April March is tells a story with a "regressive and ramified" history, in which each subsequent chapter takes place earlier than the previous one. The events happen over three eves, all very different, further subdivided into three chapters, also very different: "the temper of one of these novels is symbolic; that of another, psychological; another, communist; of still another, anti-communist; and so on." But Borges tells us "Quain regretted the ternary order, and predicted that whoever would imitate him would choose a binary arrangement": two parts divided into two parts, resulting in four distinct stories.
The resulting structure is the exact structure of "An Examination of the Work of Herbert Quain": four distinct stories, all very different, in binary arrangement. Two parts divided into two parts. This division is further elaborated on in the third story, The Secret Mirror, a play that follows a droll and fantastical aristocracy. "We suspect" the main character "does not cultivate literature", but at the same time, the first act contains "vast fortunes and ancient blood", "a nightingale on a night", "a secret duel on a terrace."
In the second act of the play, things get weirder: "everything becomes slightly horrible, everything is postponed or frustrated." And "the characters of the first act appear in the second -- bearing other names." This is the second part of the play, but also the second part of "An Examination of the Work of Herbert Quain," in the structure Quain wanted his successor to use: two parts divided into two parts, the second half a bizarre reflection of the first.
That's not the end of the parallels: because Quain is Borges' fictional inspiration, he also functions as a secret mirror to Borges, a weird, distorted reflection of what Borges is himself, or an appearance of Borges -- bearing another name. Quain titled his works after labyrinths and mirrors, recurring symbols in Borges' oeuvre. Quain wrote a collection of eight stories in his book Statements, as did Borges in his book Fictions. This casts all of Borges' assessment of Quain in a new light: "An Examination of the Work of Herbert Quain" is no longer an author writing about another (fictional) author, but a real, semi-autobiographical self-reflection, coyly rendered as third-person critique. As an example, Borges' initial chastisement of Quain (he's "over-anxious to astonish") becomes less of a straightforward attack and more of a sly apology.
It's all the more fitting, then, that this collection of reviews is not only a collection of reviews. It's also a sort of eulogy, written in the wake of the fictional Quain's death. The author is "not astonished to find that the Times Literary Supplement allots [Quain] scarcely half a column of necrological piety," and makes up for that by writing "An Examination of the Work of Herbert Quain". Borges is both literally and literarily burying and celebrating his fictional reflection simultaneously.
Here, we get to the core of what makes "An Examination of the Work of Herbert Quain" so great. In one sense, Quain and his works are fake -- pure confabulations invented by Borges to tell a story. But in a deeper sense, the stories of Quain are very much real. Not only did we just read about them, we experienced -- both literally and literarily -- the narrative arcs essential to each of them. Borges wasn't simply crafting fictions, he was also making history. And as Borges writes of Quain, "in his mind, there was no discipline inferior to history."
When we remember stories, we don't remember every word of them. We remember the broad strokes, the feelings they inspired, the concepts and premises they espoused. In that sense, our memories of what a story was are more real to us than what the story actually is. In the same way, by taking us through the essential qualities of Quain's not-real works in multiple ways, Borges makes them more real to us than they would be if we'd merely read them -- not to mention how "An Examination of the Work of Herbert Quain" is indisputably a real short story, a concrete piece of literary history. So as Borges dreams these stories into life, we have to ask: who is the reflection? Borges, or Quain?
In Borges' final review of Quain's Statements, he says "one of the stories -- not the best -- insinuates two arguments. The reader, led astray by vanity, thinks he has invented them." This is an inversion of the arc of The God of the Labyrinth, wherein the reader does come to a solution superior to the one presented by the detective. But the statement about vanity distorts our understanding of that initial review retrospectively: were we "forcibly more discerning than the detective?" Or had we been "led astray by vanity" even then? Which do we believe, and which is the reflection?
You're about to finish reading my review of Borges' short story, "An Examination of the Work of Herbert Quain". Between the story and the review, which of them feels more real to you? And is it the reflection?**
** As I was editing -- reviewing -- this post, I realized its final form was both (a) more true to what I wanted to say, and (b) a mere reflection of the initial ideas I had before I wrote it. But maybe I'm overanalyzing here. Maybe I, like Quain, am "over-anxious to astonish."
