SOURCE: "Acts of Translation," in Partisan Review, Vol. XLVII, No. 3, March, 1980, pp. 476-81.

An American educator and critic, Christ is the author of The Narrow Act: Borges' Art of Allusion (1969) and has contributed to the critical collections The Cardinal Points of Borges (1971) and Prose for Borges (1972). In addition, he and Gregory Kolovakos have translated into English two works by Peruvian novelist and short story writer Mario Vargas Llosa. In the following excerpt, Christ comments on the complex narrative structure of A Plan for Escape.

In contrast to [a] "hot" text, which outrages our sensibilities and aesthetics, Bioy-Casares's "cool" novel, A Plan for Escape, politely refuses to disturb us as it grows ever inward with a complexity that is the evident nature of its narrative…. A Plan for Escape confuses us with a slim mystery that is monomanically single, ostentatiously planned….

Bioy-Casares is a close friend of Borges and...