From journalism to literature: Borges, crítica and the universal history of infamy as an experiment in democratic dialogue

Jorge Luis Borges’ narrative works have gathered attention around the world. But Borges’ early narrative exercises, which could be generally classified as non-fiction, have only recently started garnering critics’ interest. Borges’ Universal history of infamy (UHI), the writer’s first narrative effort, is composed of a series of short stories the Argentine published in instalments in 1933-34 in Revista multicolor de los Sába-dos, a pullout section of Buenos Aires’ evening newspaper Crítica. The relevance of UHI to storytelling and journalism is multifaceted. On the one hand, the narrations show the formative exercises in prose of an author who would go on to become one of the most important fiction writers of the 20^th century. On the other hand, UHI opens a window into Borges’ approach to factuality, storytelling and the role of the mass press in a young, modern democracy. This paper considers UHI and, in particular, one of the most salient stories of the series, “Monk East-man, purveyor of iniquities”, in a new contextual light. UHI is read as a production of a daily tabloid, but also as intended Saturday entertainment for the lower-middle class readers who in the early 1930s followed Crítica newspaper. It is also considered as part of a literary apparatus and, finally, as a bridging production, meant to establish a connection between readers and their world in the context of a new democratic society.