[ilds] Apocryphra

[Bruce Redwine]

Yes to both points.  I wonder how high a regard Durrell had for Borges, the latter being already famous and established.  I'm not surprised the two didn't hit it off at that apocryphal cocktail party.  Ellmann reports that Joyce and Proust barely spoke to one another at another famous dinner party, and it wasn't because of any language barrier -- which was true in both instances.


Bruce


-----Original Message-----
>From: slighcl <slighcl at wfu.edu>
>Sent: Jun 3, 2008 7:56 PM
>To: ilds at lists.uvic.ca
>Subject: Re: [ilds] Somewhere moment
>
>But beyond that we might also consider Durrell's use of Gideon and his 
>"note-books."  The imaginary Gideon's imaginary note-books are certainly 
>an interesting sort of make-believe fulcrum to get things rolling, 
>something like the way that Borges uses an apocryphal or "delinquent" 
>printing of an encyclopedia as a make-believe fulcrum to begin spinning 
>out the history "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" (1940):
>
>I believe that I am correct in recalling he cocktail party at which 
>Durrell and Borges met did not go so well.  Both writers were wary for 
>whatever reasons and kept to their corners.   I may be remembering 
>darkly or engaging in an apocryphal distortion, but I believe that bit 
>of biography came from the biographer himself in a conversation while I 
>was preparing the text for Durrell's "Minor Mythologies" essay.