![]() But by the end of their travels together, Parini realized that Borges was extraordinary: a man who glowed with “an enigmatic brilliance. Parini decided that one should never take a “childlike, irascible, and unpredictable” old blind man in a rowboat. Parini delivers vibrant descriptions of clouds and rain, earth and sun: “the bright lakes, the fertile land with stone barns and hillsides smudged with white-and-gray sheep,” the oaks with crooked limbs, and the dark waters of Loch Ness, in which their rowboat capsized. Still, Parini agreed to squire Borges around the Scottish Highlands, serving as his guide, aide, and, especially, his eyes. He needed constant attention due to his blindness and constant acquiescence to his impetuous needs. ![]() ![]() At first, Parini saw Borges only as a garrulous, “difficult and self-involved” old man, given to nostalgic memories of a lost love and disquisitions on an astonishing range of literature. At the time, Parini had not read anything Borges had written, and he was surprised that his friends not only knew of the Argentine writer, but held him in the highest esteem. Andrews University in Scotland, Parini took two short journeys-here combined into one weeklong trip in order to maintain “narrative efficiency”-in the company of Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986), who was visiting one of Parini’s mentors. ![]() In 1971, when he was a graduate student at St. The renowned biographer, novelist, and poet recounts his transformative youthful journey with a famed literary master. ![]()
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