CONTENTS

vi               The Translators

viii              About This Anthology

1                Introduction by Jo Anne Engelbert

MACEDONIO: Selected Writings of Macedonio Fernández

I. Essays

18              Metaphysical Assumptions

20              Not All Waking Consciousness

                  Is the Open-eyed Variety

28              Toward A Theory of Humor (Fragment)

30              Toward A Theory of the Novel

II. Humor

38              Autobiography

40              Lecturability and the Put-On

42              Newcomer’s Cane

44              Involuntary Page

45              The Shrinking Patient

46              A Novel For Readers With Nerves of Steel

48              Article in Non-Collaboration

50              Letter to Jorge Luis Borges

III. Tales

54              The Squash That Became the Cosmos

58              The Surgery of Psychic Removal

67              Tantalia

IV. Novels

76             Adriana Buenos Aires:

                 The Last Bad Novel

81             Museum of the Novel of Eterna:

                 The First Good Novel

V. Poems

  98           Soft Enchantment

  99           Dying

100           Elena of the Beautiful Death

106           Love Has Left

                 This I Believed

107           Prayer To Life

Two Portraits of Macedonio

109           Jorge Luis Borges

119           Adolfo de Obieta