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Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies 317 my observation on the author's change of heart (which he himself mentions on p. x); reading Böiges proceeds over time for most of us very much like the sub-tide ofthe ñcaonal Approach to ATMutasim : like "a game with shifting miirors." Professor Bell-Villada explains in his "Preface to the Revised Edition" that this study is being re-issued at the uiging of its first edition's wide and varied readership: non-specialists, high school students and teacheis, college instiuctors and especially those involved in the College Board's Advanced Placement program. As a three-teim director of graduate studies, I can testify to the fact that Borges and His Fiction has also been one ofthe steady companions of hopeful graduate students in theii preparation for comprehensive examinations . It is the breadth of appeal of this revised introductory work, the extent and relevance of its infoimation and the appropriateness of its critical opinions that ate its primary strengths. The book is divided into three parts. Part I, "Borges's Worlds," contains three chapters that position Borges as world author and public figure . They describe his spare biography, his eccentric literary preferences, his chosen themes of labyrinths , doubles, epiphanies, time's circularity, the coincidence of opposites (among others), and they appraise his impact on subsequent Spanish American writers and on the Spanish language itself. Part II, "Borges's Fictions," is comprised of sk chapters . Chapters 4-9 take the reader systematically through Borges' major stories from Historia universal de L· infamu through Ficciones and ElAleph, grouping the nairatives under discussion according to shared themes. Part III, "Borges's Place in Literature," contains three chapters. Chaptet 10 discusses Dreamtigers and his subsequent fiction; Chapters 11 and 12, respectively, assess Peronismo and defend Borges against the tiresome chaige that he was too cosmopolitan to be authentically Argentine. There are a few questionable, if minoi, assertions in the text. Foi example on p. 98, in a discussion of "Death and the Compass:" "the inspectoi's opening remark is no need to look foi a three-legged cat'—meaningless in English, but a common Spanish idiom more or less signifying 'no sweat.'" I rather think it more or less signifies "don't boirow trouble," or "don't go looking for trouble. " And on p. 69, "Borges's was not a visual imagination [...] in the Argentine authoi's best stories, adventure yarns included, the visual element is completely suboidinate to mental patterns ." Given Borges's unfailing fondness for the "continuity of discontinuous images" (Cozarinsky, Borges in/and/on Film, 16), the negation of a visual imagination seems excessive. Toward the end of "Death and the Compass" we find this satdonic remindet ofthe detective's earlier failure to see evidence cleady: Lönnrot struck out across the fields. He saw dogs, he saw a flatcai on a siding , he saw the line of the horizon, he saw a pale horse. [...] Night was falling when he saw the rectángula! mirador ofthe villa Tiiste-le-Roy [...]. (The Akph and Other Stories 73-74) Readeis will pethaps recall that this is also how Dahlmann "sees" the equally staik and static images of his haUucinated south in Borges's story of the same name. "Helpful" and "readable" were two adjectives frequently applied to Borges and His Fiction when this book fiist appealed in 1981. The newly revised edition richly merits those qualifiers even more than before. One can scarcely imagine a more satisfying, jargon-free introduction to Borges as storytellei. And the economical paperback edition now makes it an extremely affordable as well as a highly desirable addition to die most modest peisonal library. John P. Dyson Indiana University The Mexican-American Orquesta University of Texas Press, 1999 By Manuel Peña Historically, Mexican-Americans have evolved in a marginal hybrid cultural space created by the oppositional and dialectical forces in 318 Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies Anglo/Mexican societies. Such cultural tensions have deteimined the present diveise ideologies and cultuial manifestations ofthe Mexican-American communities. It is precisely in this antagonistic and dialectical historical context that Manuel Peña grounded his documentation and analysis of The Mexican-American orquesta...

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