Alas, I was knee-high to a grasshopper when I read this. In fact, I was in my mother's womb. How on Earth did I smuggle the bk in? Maybe I was inside somebody else's mother's womb. Whatever the case, I'm using the time elapsed as an excuse for not remembering much about this. Nonetheless, I remember being disappointed by it. It seems that it makes fun of "modernism" in the usual kindof so-called 'conservative' way. Not that "modernism" can't stand to be deflated but it's all a matter of what one is posing as supposedly better to it. I don't recall being impressed by this bk's alternatives. Maybe there weren't any. ( )

Easily ranking as one of my most fortuitous finds at a library book sale, this book is a treasure to fans of either Borges or Bioy Casares (though frankly a fan of one probably is--or would be--a fan of the other, right?). Originally written under the Argentine innovators' shared pseudonym H. Bustos Domecq, the book purports to be a series of essays by the writer about avant-garde artists in a variety of media. What I found really satisfying about this book was how it mercilessly mocks what would be called postmodern art while simultaneously being a terrific example of the same. In most cases you only gradually come to understand the absurdity of the art and artist described, for instance the author's dear friend who claimed the negative space intervening between buildings as his own sculptures and charged the public admission fees to view them, or the poet who rejected the use of metaphor and ultimately--in a contest to write the best verses about a rose--won by submitting to judges a specimen of the flower itself.

At no point was it really clear to me how the authors shared the work of writing. I did not, for instance, have the sense that the voice changed between pieces as though they switched on and off. The conflation was seamless.

I think the world of literature needs to embrace the adjective "Borgesian" and place it on a level alongside "Kafkaesque". ( )