The Book of Imaginary Beings
Jorge Luis Borges (translated by Andrew Hurley)
Viking
Nonfiction, Folklore/Humorous Nonfiction
Themes: Bestiaries, Weirdness
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Description
Throughout the history of humanity, from the earliest myths to more recent authors and poets, all manner of strange, wondrous, and terrifying creatures have crawled, flown, slithered, or leapt forth from the depths of our collective imagination. Several of them are outlined here. Originally in Spanish, this reprint was translated by Andrew Hurley and has illustrations by Peter Sís.
Review
If you are the sort of well-schooled historical literary enthusiast for whom the mere mention of an obscure last name brings forth all manner of related biographies, works, predecessors, students, and contemporaries, then you will likely find much more to admire in this book than I, a mere uneducated plebian, did. To be sure, I did find a fair amount of material I could understand. It works like most other bestiaries, though the selection of entries covers a baffling range from well-known myths to passages from Kafka and C. S. Lewis, often with no accompanying commentary to explain their inclusion. The (late) author often cites classical and literary sources for each creature, though, if the afterword is any indication, he was given to straight-faced put-ons in his many fictional works and may well have invented some of the more obscure "references." Some hints of wit in the narrative left me wondering if there weren't perhaps whole layers of humor and scholarly jest hidden deep in the oft-murky passages of translations and speculations on the various beasts, if perhaps the seemingly absurd inclusions and exclusions weren't themselves intended to provoke knowing chuckles from those of higher breeding, education, and/or general intelligence. Such people would be, in essence, reading a whole different book than the one I slogged through. In the end, I can only comment on what I did read: a somewhat interesting fantastic bestiary, introducing me to several beasts I was unfamiliar with, but which ultimately proved neither as accessible nor as thorough as other fantastic bestiaries in my library. As for the peculiar Peter Sís illustrations, probably intended to heighten the whimsical overtones, I found them largely pointless.