An Examination of the Work of Herbert Quain
Investigation of the Work of Herbert Quain (Spanish Original title: Examen de la obra de Herbert Quain ) is a story by the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges, the 1941 in the collection The Garden of paths which branch (El jardin de los senderos que se bifurcan ) and 1944 in their expansion fictions ( Ficciones ) was published. The narrative is a characteristic of Borges ' footnote to imaginary books " and describes in the garb of a critical essay incurred between 1933 and 1939 imaginary works of Herbert Quain, an imaginary figure.
Content
Herbert Quain, an Irish writer, died in Roscommon. It seems to the narrator, who was also in contact with Quain, not surprising that the obituaries in The Times Literary Supplement and the Spectator were not very extensive, and benevolent, although Quain be considered brilliant and was always trying to surprise his readers with his books. So the brief examination of his work begins.
Quains first book, The God of the Labyrinth, has some lengths, and in 1933 published simultaneously with Ellery Queen novel The Siamese Twin Mystery, which is why it was initially received little attention. Organized like a detective novel, the reader is given only after the classical resolution of the crucial clue. He realizes that the detective is mistaken, and can resolve the case after re- reading themselves.
April March 1936 is an even more unusual works. It consists only of a third part, and its branched structure is, according to Quain the laws of the game, the " symmetry, the arbitrariness and the weariness " subject. The anti chronic novel offers nine readings with each other stylistics and other end, the plot lines, according to the narrator show considerable differences in quality.
The comedy in two acts The Secret Mirror from 1938, in which appear the figures of the first act in the second under other names, stylistically reminiscent of the epigrams of Oscar Wilde. The plot of the second elevator is parallel to that of the first, the atmosphere is, however, depressing. It turns out that the first elevator was just a fantasy of a figure in the second lift. The piece was, according to the narrator often wrongly interpreted psychoanalytically.
In 1939 published his most original Quain and at the same time the most difficult accessible work, statements, consisting of eight stories with frustrierendem output. The narrator confesses that he does it to your own story in his anthology The garden of the paths that inspire branch left.
Analysis
" A tedious and strapazierender It is nonsense to write thick books; auszuwalzen to five hundred pages an idea whose perfectly adequate explanation takes a few minutes. Better yet, we should proceed so that you do, as if there were these books already, and a résumé, a comment is submitted. (...) For greater shrewdness, greater lack of talent, greater laziness I have chosen to write notes on imaginary books. "
The comments on Quains detective novel The God of the Labyrinth act as a distillate of the novel reviews, Borges wrote in the late 1930s for the weekly newspaper El Hogar. Borges was one of the first writers at the end of classical modernism, who met the interested until now often regarded as trivial literature genre of the detective novel.
Quains April March is considered due to the non-linear structure that compels the reader to interact with the text, as a conceptual precursor of hypertext literature enables the option of associative linking.