SOURCE: Kushigian, Julia A. “The Detective Story Genre in Poe and Borges.” Latin American Literary Review 11, no. 22 (spring-summer 1983): 27-39.

In the following essay, Kushigian traces connections between the detective stories of Edgar Allan Poe and Jorge Luis Borges, and concludes that the two writers share a unique perception of the world.

Jorge Luis Borges has remarked that writers create their precursors. This statement suggests that the precursor's text should be read and understood in a unique manner, whereupon a reading of the precursor's text is viewed in the light of the author's (in this situation, Borges') more recent text. Borges has in a sense inverted the downward movement of influence from precursor to author. In this manner he aligns himself to the theory of literature expressed by T. S. Eliot in his article, «Tradition and the Individual Talent». Briefly stated, the history suggests that new poets should be...