“Texas is the home of the tall tale; exaggerating reality is woven into the culture,” says Eric Benson in his essay “Forgotten But Not Gone” featured in the July 1st issue of Guernica. Benson travels to Austin on the fiftieth anniversary of Borges’s first visit to Texas to search for traces of the fabulist in the Lone Star State. Below, Benson lists his reading recommendations for essential Borges and, of course, a favorite tall tale.
Ficciones and The Aleph and Other Stories:
Borges’s two most famous and satisfying story collections.
The Book of Sand and Shakespeare’s Memory:
The wise, sly master in his later years.
Borges’s 1977 lectures at the Teatro Coliseo in Buenos Aires. One reveals much about his blindness.
Nothing Happened and Then It Did: A Chronicle in Fact and Fiction by Jake Silverstein:
An adventure yarn set primarily in Texas and Mexico. Fact and fiction alternate chapters.