This post was inspired by my recent reading of Penguin's editions of the collected Borges. I'm not sure what year they came out (and I don't care enough to check right now), but I can't help feeling they're some of the most important reissues... ever.
There are three in the series--the collected fictions, and selected non-fictions and poetry--each featuring humorous jacket blurbs proclaiming themselves more significant than the others. Before now, all this material was only available in very scattered additions; these new ones are beyond value. I haven't actually gotten around to the poetry yet (or finished the non-fiction--perhaps the most valuable of the three because more than half is only now available in translation), but the degree to which I understand someone I'd already considered one of my favorite authors (based only on my readings of Labyrinths and Ficciones) has grown exponentially, to the extent I feel I'd hardly read him at all.
Above and beyond being one of the most proficient thinkers ever, Borges is also the most interesting--and I can't help feeling that in a sense, despite being one of its most marginal writers, his works contain the whole of western literature within them.
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