SOURCE: “‘Borges and I,’ A Narrative Sleight of Hand,” in Studies in Twentieth Century Literature,Vol. 22, No. 2, Summer, 1998, pp. 371–81.

In the following essay, Zubizarreta advances interpretive strategies for reading “Borges and I” as a short story.

An Autobiographical Page?

Due to its autobiographical appearance, “Borges and I,” a brief work published in El Hacedor (1960), seems to present, under the pattern of a dual personality, what a writer actually feels, or imagines he may feel, in confronting his social persona.¹ Because this text, usually understood as a confession, offers some aesthetic insights and succinct information about thematic changes, quotations have frequently been taken from it to corroborate conclusions about the author and his work. Criticism, nonetheless, has paid little attention to its narrative quality.

Can “Borges and I” be considered a narrative text, a short story whose writing shows the author's original technique?² In her analysis of Borges's Evaristo...