Labyrinths Borges (1962), Personal Anthology Borges (1965), Nine Stories by JD Salinger (1953)
More Borges short stories. He was really quality over quantity, there just isn’t that much (published, translated) out there. Ficciones was so good I’ve raided Labyrinths (from the 60s and by a bunch of different translators) and Personal Anthology (there’s a lot of overlap of stories so it’s not really reading three books).
The translator really makes a difference – Kerrigan seems to be predominant, but he seems to draw out the philosophical aspects more and I wonder if he’s a bit dry. Picking up Labyrinths and the particularity and liveliness of the language shows, and it makes some of the minor stories jump out. All the tigers!
I can still repeat from memory many hexameters โฆ streaked with tigers, over-burdened and criss-crossed with traversal and silent tigers
Nine Stories by JD Salinger – these are pretty wonderful. Embarrassingly, I’ve actually had this for about 20 years sitting on a shelf and never read it (apart from maybe bananafish?). For some reason I’d taken to thinking of Salinger as a bit one-track – and while I think every story has some sort of coming-of-age element, they all feel a lot more mature than I remember.