Brain Snacks: Tasty Tidbits of Knowledge
Allen B. Ruch at The Modern World has created an imaginative virtual bookshelf of all the texts that Borges famously didn't write. You can find Ts'ui Pen's Garden of Forking Paths here, as well as many other invented works.
Feel like getting your academic jargon on? How about jumping into this scholarly discussion of Borges and cyberspace? Davin O'Dwyer contends that Borges' work (and especially "The Garden of Forking Paths") prefigures the era of cyberspace (source). Christopher Rollason, on the other hand, elucidates some of the differences between Borges' theory and the Internet (source). Where do you stand on the issue?
"The Garden of Forking Paths" has never been adapted for the screen, though the TV drama FlashForward did borrow the name for Episode 17 of its short-lived series in 2010. Is the lack of movie or TV productions due to the theoretical nature of the text? Is "The Garden of Forking Paths" just plain unfilmable? Or could you imagine directing it?
Borges wasn't just an essayist and fiction writer – he was also, evidently, a lyricist. In the 1960s Borges collaborated with legendary tango composer Astor Piazzolla to create a series of tangos. Their work was rerecorded and released as an album in 1994.