H ntil recently, my library did not reside in any complete collection of all the writings of any author. I had not considered essential to collect the books and none of my favorite writers, probably because it is a difficult and sometimes impossible. My friend Jose Luis has taught me that there are flagrant cases of incomplete "Complete Works", as those of Borges Emecé published in the nineties: hundreds of pages written by him have not been included in this edition perhaps because the editor slipped slightly clever, or because the huge Don Jorge creative activity prevented this.
is very difficult to reconstruct all the literature of a writer, especially if it is without them. I can imagine Borges cheating on their publications, entering the beautiful game that he liked, that of deception and counterfeiting. Even with the collaboration of the writer, if it is not orderly and does not maintain a file correctly classified, it is easy to lose any writing, letter, article or story in the collection process. The most meticulous writers, those who even made copies of correspondence sent, may lose a small piece of his work over the years and the vicissitudes. Still amazes me to know that Thomas Jefferson , the third president of the United States, backing all the letters he sent using a polygraph . That it is simplifying the work of the editors.
complete works then comes to a mission impossible, daunting task without end. Like Sisyphus with its endless work , editors searched in the archives of writers, friends and family, fighting copyright of the various countries that have published his work, and how everything must have an end, printing a hodgepodge collected you approach the entire work, work that is removed with the appearance, by surprise, that story forgotten in a drawer in the summer house, or sent to a friend in times of difficulty.
That has been the case in the story of Julio Cortázar "Ciao Verona", which was recently published in a English newspaper of wide circulation. Why and how has escaped this story to the collections of Cortazar's narrative is something I do not know, but this appearance was due to the nerves to the editors of the complete works that -Gutenberg Galaxy is preparing, editing, which in turn added another unpublished story so far ("Bix Beiderbecke"), to flush the previous complete collections of his stories.
So, a big reason for not purchasing complete any of these works is that they will never become one, even a good approximation. Anyway, the great work you are doing-Gutenberg Galaxy has attracted me, and started acquiring the complete works of Franz Kafka , being short and I have a few of his books. By the weakness I feel for his literature, I continued with Cortazar, still have not stopped running, and I know that will not be final. Juan Carlos Onetti , another of my favorite writers, is also being collected. And I wonder how much longer resist the complete works of Vargas Llosa, Neruda, Nabokov ... which knows the market well-Gutenberg Galaxy. I mean the market fetishists bibliophiles, of course.
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