This Side of Paradise
Borges imagined a kind of library; Buenos Aires imagined a kind of Borges.
“I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.”
~ Jorge Luis Borges
Buenos Aires is a city for book lovers, a kind of paradise made in the imagination of her most famous author.
From the majestic El Ateneo Grand Splendid on Avenida Santa Fe, an old theater long since converted into a house of worship for bibliophiles and aspiring literati alike, to her ubiquitous and iconic newsstands, selling diarios, revistas y libros on every other street corner, this is a culture with a special affinity for the written word.
(El Ateneo Grand Splendid, named by National Geographic in 2019 “The world’s most beautiful bookstore.” Source: Getty Images)
(The classic Buenos Aires kiosko, selling everything from magazines and daily newspapers to translations of the works of Homer and Hesiod.)
Everywhere you look, in cafés and restaurants, plazas and parks, bars and bistros, at outdoor tables lining the sidewalks, stretched out under the arching jacarandas, you’ll find people not only reading... but reading (as Harold Bloom used to say) deeply.
The local porteños are immersed in the great novelists; Cervantes... Proust... Eliot... in thrall to the sparking playwrights; Molière... Shaw... Ibsen... and enraptured by history’s deep thinkers; Aristotle... Heraclitus... Cicero...
I used to think, strolling the banks of the Seine River in the late, lingering hours of a warm summer’s evening, the day’s fading light stretched thin across the sky, that the impressionist movement could have begun nowhere else but in the City of Lights.
Wandering the streets of Buenos Aires, here in the “Paris of the South,” I sometimes wonder if any other city could have produced a writer such as Sr. Borges... and whether any place so aptly fulfills his image of paradise here on earth.
Until next week...
Cheers,
Joel Bowman
Buenos Aires ~ Sept. 14, 2022
Praise for Joel Bowman’s debut novel, Morris, Alive
"Full of witty dialogue, sound philosophical meditations and memorable scenes. Joel's prose style, characters and plot development simply belong to a more graceful era."
~ Doug Casey, New York Times Bestselling Author
"Aussie Borges meets a classically-read Kerouac!"
~Will Bonner, Author of Family Fortunes
"[Morris] is a young romantic barroom philosopher, who has plenty to say about the importance of the Idea of America. An impressive debut, Morris, Alive is certainly worth your reading."
~ Addison Wiggin, NYT Bestselling Author