Borges and His Fiction: A Guide to His Mind and Art by Gene H. Beil-Villada (review)

Book Reviews283 españolas offers the field of Hispanic linguistics a provident and manageable tool for the beginning student. The text is designed for easy completion in one semester and provides the student with detailed explanations on every point introduced, followed by graded exercises. (The usual failing of the specialist's text is that there is no vehicle for exercising and testing the student's accumulating knowledge.) Professors Barrutia and Terrell have supported their textual presentations with appendices containing relevant diagrams and graphs, a bilingual glossary and an abundant bibliography. In the preface to the instructor, the co-authors stipulate that their work is to serve as: 1) a manual for correct pronunciation, 2) an introduction to phonological and orthographic systems, and 3) an introduction to the variations of pronunciation norms within the Hispanic world (p. 1). The authors have patently accomplished these self-imposed goals. It must be said, however, that a heavy reliance need be placed on the instructor using this as a classroom text, since the numerous exercises provided throughout have no key for self-correction. In summary, it is my feeling and expectation that a second edition of this work (surely merited by the scope and attention to content-detail) will prove to be without peer, considering the audience to which it is directed. Fonética is a gratifyingly forthright and practical instruction manual which introduces the undergraduate student of Spanish to a variety of linguistic information usually reserved for the graduate specialist. ROBERT L. SURLES University of Idaho Gene H. Beil-Villada. Borges and His Fiction: A Guide to His Mind and Art. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1981. 292p. No Latin American author has been as extensively studied as Jorge Luis Borges, and it would not be surprising to find that yearly criticism of his writings surpasses that devoted to Cervantes, the only Spanish-language writer before Borges to attract a respectable international attention. Of particular note has been the reception of Borges among American and English readers. It would not be inaccurate to claim that the latter, who know only the Borges of Ficciones and subsequent stories, possess the image of a writer only the shadow of the Borges who has been a powerful presence in Argentine and Latin American literature since the twenties and is, consequently, one of the most controversial figures in contemporary Spanishlanguage letters. Few English-speaking critics have been able to grasp the issues of this controversy, which concerns both the role of the writer in society and the cultural identity of Latin America, and the prevailing image of Borges seems to be that of a fluent craftsman of metaphysical fantasies. Although Hispanists writing in English like Martin Stabb, Ronald Christ, and Emir Rodriguez Monegal have attempted to provide monographic studies on the "whole" Borges, there remains a substantive difference between the Borges of English-speaking readers and those who read and study Borges in Spanish and in the context of Latin American literature. Bell-Villada's monograph is an eloquent trace of both the prominence of Borges in the English-speaking world — enough has been written on him to make necessary a "guide" — and of the predominantly thematic or content approach to which his 284ROCKY MOUNTAIN REVIEW writings are normally subjected. Borges's fiction — note the emphasis on this one segment of the Borgesian opera — is surveyed in essentially chronological fashion, with summaries which attempt to give both the texts' narrative complexities and their artistic originality. Bell-Villada rather stridently disavows in his introduction current critical fashions, a tactic which might justify his thematic approach and enhance its appeal to the readers of literary supplements. Yet such a tactic blithely ignores why so much of Borges's international reputation is bound up with the emergence of the postmodernist criticism which his own essays so fascinatingly prefigure. Borges and His Fiction as a consequence makes for a very "flat" reading experience; perhaps better to read the stories themselves. DAVID WILLIAM FOSTER Arizona State University Sylvie Carduner and M. Peter Hagiwara. D'accord: la prononciation du français international, acquisition et perfectionnement. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1982.xiii, 304p. This textbook is described by its authors as...