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

This Side of Paradise
By Joel Bowman

Buenos Aires is a city for book lovers, a kind of paradise made in the imagination of her most famous author. Could it have been any other way?

We’re back in the Paris of the South this week, dear reader, having completed our summer sojourn over on The Continent. It’s always a thrill, returning to the fin del mundo. Aside from the city’s chaotic political scene… her shambolic economy… her erratic taxi drivers and irrepressible football fanatics (who were holding forth in jovial fashion from their balconies late last evening)…

…there’s the quiet affinity for a bygone era, as evidenced by her denizens’ affection for literary culture. This is a city that holds fast to its belletristic past, which esteems its towering authors and treats its libraries and book stores with a reverence bordering on piety.

From the majestic El Ateneo Grand Splendid on Avenida Santa Fe, a graceful 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, the local porteños harbor special fondness 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… Hesiod… Heraclitus. Photo: Joel)

One of the first things we notice, upon returning to our home here in the south, is the conspicuous lack of smart phones. Rather than succumbing to the infinite scroll, we see people (millennial trigger warning)… conversing with their fellow humans, lingering over unhurried coffees and, more often than not, delving into classic, timeless titles.

Everywhere you look, in cafés and restaurants, plazas and parks, bars and bistros, at outdoor tables lining the sidewalks and stretched out under the arching jacarandas, you’ll find people not only reading... but reading (as the late, great lit crit, Harold Bloom, used to say)… reading deeply. 

The local porteños are immersed in the great novelists; Cervantes... Proust... Eliot... in thrall to the sparkling playwrights;  Molière... Shaw... Ibsen... and enraptured by history’s deep thinkers; Aristotle... Horace... Cicero... The kioskos (pictured above), carry classical Greek and Latin texts (in Spanish) alongside contemporary literature and the news of the day.

Truly, the aspiring novelist must make a determined effort to avoid inspiration. (On that note, we return to our regular writing schedule next week; MF members may expect our third novel sometime in the coming months. Not yet a member? Correct that glitch in the matrix here.)

Strolling the banks of Paris’ Seine River in the late, lingering hours of a warm summer’s evening, the day’s fading light stretched thin across the sky, one is often given to ponder whether the Impressionist movement could have begun anywhere else but in the City of Lights. 

Wandering the streets of Buenos Aires, here in the Paris of the South, we sometimes wonder whether 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

P.S. Speaking of an incurable love of the written word… Fellow Flâneurs can now download our first two novels – Morris, Alive and Night Drew Her Sable Cloak – in the Books section on our Substack page, here. If you’re not already a member, consider joining our budding literary community and supporting our labor of love, here.