Jorge Luis Borges is my favorite writer.
He is the one who got me into reading, with the story “The Aleph,” and I have been reading him since I was a kid. He introduced me to a world of literature that is still my refuge, my source of inspiration, and my way into other perspectives and into life. What I found there was not a list of books to admire. It was a way of looking. A page could hold a city, a century, a belief I had never lived, and still be exact.
I consider writing one of the most valuable skills there is, even more now, when generating words and text is so cheap, meaningless, and mass-produced. Anyone can produce text. Very few can make it say what they actually think. From people I admire I have often heard that a good writer is someone with an ordered mind. If you can transmit what you think so that others understand it, that is a valuable skill. For my part, I think that to be a good writer you first have to be an excellent reader. You learn what an ordered mind looks like by living inside other people’s sentences for a long time. Borges is my recommendation for anyone setting out to master that skill. He was my way in.
“Let others boast of the pages they have written; I am proud of the ones I have read.”
More to come on this website and this project. This page is not official and is not affiliated with any institution or estate; it is a project from a reader. To take part, write to contact@jorgeluisborges.org.