Perhaps I’m too underdone to appreciate this. Started reading it as part of Borges’ ‘Collected Fictions,’ but could not persevere to completion. I enjoyed it – but less than I expected in light of the mammoth reputation that Borges possesses. Pirates and bandits, love and adventure and life and death live in these stories. On the surface at least. Peel it back and find yourself bemusedly spending time with a writer not wholly engaged with any of the aforementioned – examining them and dreaming them and, most significantly, writing them – but not bringing you with him to live them. The overall effect is a strange combination of vivid dissociation, a curtain spread taut over objects so that outlines are seen but never textures. Broad impressions delivered with exhaustive attention. Narrative immediacy traded for metafictional scaffolding. Reading a writer writing about a writer writing about what he’d read. Fictional historians of sometimes fictional, sometimes factual history. Clever and engaging and stimulating and somewhat dissatisfying.
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Fruit Thief 
Hi Fruit Thief — I am reading this book right now. My version is called: “A Universal History of Infamy.” The work includes delightful moments, which allow you to see the budding writer. From what I read, Borges is not proudest of this work, but why criticize your pupal self? I see promise in it. Some stories are less engaging but, the thing about short stories that I appreciate, is that you don’t have to suffer anything you dislike for too long before a new story appears. Most of all, I love that he eventually finds his unique voice after his early foray into telling stories he’d consumed and modified.
BTW — Thanks for stopping by.//mm
I do agree, it’s a promising collection – very entertaining! If anything, I’d say that Borges (in his retrospective preface) is far too hard on his young self. Any criticisms of the stories having been ‘stolen’ (and thus unoriginal) is misplaced – the writing is unmistakably Borges (even in translation – or so I think).
Why can’t we all get it right sooner? (I can almost hear the frustration in that preface.) Life would be too easy then, I expect. Agreed, he is a harsh critic, but better he be so than someone else, since it means he has set himself a high bar. Thanks for sharing your views, Fruitthief. :-)//mm