Borges absolutely would not stop doing this [2]. His reasoning was that writing whole books was a lot of work, whereas writing book reviews was much easier, and

Borges absolutely would not stop doing this [2]. His reasoning was that writing whole books was a lot of work, whereas writing book reviews was much easier, and let you get much the same ideas across [1]: It is a laborious madness and an impoverishing one, the madness of composing vast books—setting out in five hundred pages an idea that can be perfectly related orally in five minutes. The better way to go about it is to pretend that these books already exist, and offer a summary, a commentary on them. That was Carlyle’s procedure in Sartor Resartus, Butler’s in The Fair Haven—though those works suffer under the imperfection that they themselves are books, and not a whit less tautological than the others. A more reasonable, more inept, and more lazy man, I have chosen to write notes on imaginary books. [1] https://nevalalee.wordpress.com/2017/06/21/the-borges-test/ https://nevalalee.wordpress.com/2017/06/21/the-borges-test/ [2] http://www.anoteonarainynight.com/borgesbooks http://www.anoteonarainynight.com/borgesbooks