BRATTLEBORO — On Friday, Feb. 12, at 5 p.m., the Brattleboro Literary Festival continues its 20th anniversary year with a little literary armchair travel.
Pour your favorite drink and join in on a rollicking road trip with Vermont author Jay Parini in an online discussion of his book Borges and Me: An Encounter.
In 1971, Parini was an aspiring poet and graduate student of literature at University of St. Andrews in Scotland; he was also in flight from being drafted into service in the Vietnam War.
One day, his friend and mentor, Alastair Reid, asked Parini if he could play host for a “visiting Latin American writer” while he attended to business in London.
Parini agreed, and that “writer” turned out to be Argentine poet, writer, and translator Jorge Luis Borges, an aged and eccentric master of literary compression and metaphysics, whose books set the stage for the magical realism movement in the 20th century - about whom Parini knew literally nothing.
Borges was blind, talkative, vital - and up for adventure. What ensued was a seriocomic romp across the Scottish landscape that Borges insisted he must “see,” all the while declaiming and reciting from the literary encyclopedia that was his head, and Parini's eventual reckoning with his vocation and personal fate.
Parini, of Weybridge, a member of the Middlebury College faculty since 1982, will converse with author and Emerson College professor Rosario de Swanson.
To register for this free event, visit bit.ly/LitCocktail7.