Out of this world

Once I adjusted to Borges' sense of humor in Ficciones, several of the stories reminded me of Lovecraft, but without the nameless dread.

Several other stories made me feel as if I were reading Chandler again-- characters show up, are named, act decisively, and clearly have a long history with the detective although they have not been mentioned to the reader previously in the story.

This technique of Chandler's puts the reader in the same position as the detective in a sense. We are in the dark, looking through small windows, then trying to arrange what we see as if those glimpses were cels or snapshots, in order to create a complete story line.

I often feel like an ineffective detective at the start of a case, the first time I read something.