In the autumn of 1971, a young American graduate student named Jay Parini found himself driving a nearly blind Jorge Luis Borges through the Scottish Highlands in a borrowed car he could barely control, on roads he did not know, toward destinations that kept changing. Borges, already one of the most celebrated writers in the world, had arrived in Scotland to give a series of lectures and had somehow attached himself to Parini, who was twenty-two years old, broke, and entirely unprepared for the responsibility. What followed was several weeks of wandering, argument, storytelling, and unexpected intimacy between a young man trying to find his way into literature and an old man who had spent a lifetime dissolving its boundaries. Parini later said that the experience changed everything. Reading what Borges made of a lifetime at his desk, you suspect the feeling may have been mutual.
No writer bent the boundaries of literature quite like Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986). A master of labyrinths, mirrors, and infinite libraries, his stories, among them The Library of Babel, Ficciones, and The Aleph, dissolved the line between reality and illusion with a philosopher's precision and a poet's imagination. Denied the Nobel Prize yet immortalized as a titan of twentieth-century letters, Borges turned fiction into a metaphysical playground where time folds, identities blur, and every book contains the universe. Decades after his death, his work remains as unsettling, exhilarating, and uncannily prescient as ever, speaking with particular force to an age preoccupied with simulation, infinite information, and the instability of the real.
Only a rare scholar could capture the enigmatic spirit of Borges, both the man and the myth, with the intimacy that Jay Parini brings to the task. A novelist, poet, and professor at Middlebury College, Parini draws on that unlikely Scottish journey in Borges and Me: An Encounter, a luminous novelized memoir that weaves mentorship, wandering, and the transformative power of storytelling into a singular tribute. With more than twenty books to his name, Parini does not merely study literary giants. He finds ways to make the reader feel their presence in a room.
In the conversation that follows, Parini reflects on Borges the man he knew, the writer who remade what fiction could do, and the stories that, like the best of Borges's own, refuse to stay inside their covers.
Charles Carlini: In Borges and Me, you portray your younger self as deeply conflicted about the Vietnam War and uncertain about adulthood. How did those personal challenges shape your interactions with Borges during your travels?
Jay Parini: He was coming from such a different world—one deeply rooted in his mind and imagination. I, on the other hand, felt threatened by the world around me. But through him, I think I learned to integrate head and heart in strange ways. He had had his own terrifying encounters with Argentine President Juan Perón. I think that these experiences shaped him in some deep ways, and his politics were apolitical but rooted in a complex and cosmopolitan worldview.
CC: The road trip with Borges through the Scottish Highlands is at the heart of your memoir. How did this journey influence your understanding of the places you visited, especially seen through Borges’s unique perspective?
JP: I think seeing the Highlands through his blindness—if that makes any sense—had an impact. I was looking keenly at things he couldn’t see, hoping to describe them.
CC: Borges, known for his intricate labyrinths and metaphysical themes, acts as an unconventional mentor to you. How did his insights on literature, love, and poetry impact your worldview at the time?
JP: My view of the world was never the same after Borges. His work is an invitation to the imagination, to fantasy, to blending fact and fiction in fresh ways. His reading was vast, and the idea of a polymathic reader has always intrigued and inspired my own reading.
CC: You describe the book as a “novelistic memoir.” Could you share why you chose to blend fact and fiction, and how you think this hybrid genre serves the story?
JP: Hybrid was the form that Borges reinvented in his way. It seemed appropriate. His world was enchanted, and the world without imagination is rarely enchanted. So I was able, using this form, to let my imagination run free. I didn’t trouble over “fact” in the way I would have to if I were writing a “straight” memoir. I wanted the freedom to invent scenes and conversations.
CC: The dynamic between a young man and an elder—a theme as timeless as the journey itself—feels particularly poignant in this book. How did Borges’s wisdom help you reconcile your youthful fears and ambitions?
JP: Borges, by his example, helped me see my young life from a broader perspective. I was terrified of the world, very naive, having been raised in Scranton by kind but completely unsophisticated and uneducated parents. Borges was the opposite—and the antidote as well!
CC: Borges is a literary giant known for exploring the surreal. Did any moments from your travels together feel particularly surreal to you, echoing the elements of mystery and imagination he famously wrote about?
JP: Yes, at the labyrinth at Scone Palace—I returned there just a few weeks ago—we met some crazy woman, probably schizophrenic. I was able to turn her into the three witches of Macbeth in the way Borges would. Literature is a tissue of illusions and allusions. So is life. Borges taught me that.
CC: Much of the narrative is filled with Borges’s musings on Western literature and philosophy. What specific ideas or literary works discussed on your trip have stayed with you most profoundly?
JP: The centrality of Don Quixote seems to stick. The entire book is subtly modeled on Cervantes' masterpiece. A madcap, humorous yet serious adventure feels to me like the essence of life—my own life story!
CC: You touch on themes of escapism, both in fleeing America and in venturing through Scotland with Borges. Did your time with Borges ultimately help you confront or escape your sense of dislocation?
JP: I think we have to relearn to play seriously, as children do.
CC: How did the act of writing Borges and Me deepen or alter your memories of Borges and the journey? Were there any parts of the trip that only became clear to you in hindsight?
JP: The book came as a revelation. I had buried most of it, dreamed it over five decades, but not seen it clearly. Writing the book allowed the dream to come forward, to find its proper lineaments, its texture, its smells, and tastes. Making the film this past fall, I was able to relive everything. Everything! It was wild to live on the set for two months, during the whole shoot, and see my younger self, see Borges, see Alastair in “real” life, only played by actors. I think it’s going to be a terrific film. Due in September 2025.
CC: Your memoir captures an era marked by social upheaval and existential questioning—parallels to our own time. What would Borges, with his fascination for history and human patterns, likely say about the uncertainty of our present moment?
JP: I think Borges would have shrugged and said, “What did you ever expect?” He’d been through upheavals in Argentina. He had seen war in Europe. He knew that the human species is unreliably self-destructive. But he had faith in the imagination as the only possible way out, and so do I.
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