"Borges did not believe in perfection: interview with Daniel Balderston

Abstract

Daniel Balderston is one of the greatest specialists in the work of Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges. Professor at the Department of Hispanic Languages ​​& Literatures at the University of Pittsburgh, USA, he is the director of Borges Center, which houses in its website a large material on the author’s oeuvre. Balderston’s work has had a significant impact on Borges’ criticism at different theoretical perspectives, from research into his historical sources to gender studies. Among his books, we may cite Out of context: Historical Reference and the Representation of Reality in Borges (1993), Borges, Realidad y simulacros (2000) and Innumerables relaciones: como leer con Borges (2010). Recently, Balderston has dedicated himself to the genetic criticism of Borges’ manuscripts, spread across different countries – United States, Argentina, Uruguay, Spain, Switzerland – in libraries and private collections. This research is largely documented in the book How Borges Wrote (University of Virginia Press, 2018), which Balderston considers his greatest achievement in the forty years he spent examining Borges’ writings. In this interview, Balderston spoke about the detective search for Borges’, about the arduous process of composing How Borges Wrote and about the status of genetic research in the Anglo-Saxon context. The book was published in France in 2019, under the title La Méthode Borges, translated by Sophie Campbell (Presses Universitaires de Vincennes) and should be released later this year in Argentina, in an expanded version, as El método Borges, translated by Ernesto Montequin (Ampersand).