Into the river is no longer a banned book!
"I have always imagined paradise as a kind of library." If - as I imagine - you're visiting this blog because you like reading about books, chances are you've already encountered this quote from the great Argentinian poet, writer, and essayist Jorge Luis Borges. Maybe you also know that for many years Borges earned his living as "first assistant" at a municipal library in Buenos Aires, cataloging books down in the basement (also, apparently, catching up on his reading), until he was dismissed for political reasons when Juan Perón came to power – only to be appointed the director of the National Public Library of Argentina after Perón was deposed. My appreciation of this feel-good quote for readers par excellence was turned upside down recently when I read Paul Monette’s Borrowed time: an Aids memoir . Monette's friend Roger Horwitz (I use the word 'friend' because in the book Monette spends some time telling us how it is the term he p...