SOURCE: “Borges's ‘Ulrike’—Signature of a Literary Life,” in Studies in Short Fiction, Vol. 33, No. 3, Summer, 1996, pp. 325–31.

In the following essay, Petersen defends Borges's later fiction against criticism that it is inferior to his earlier work.

When readers of Borges reach for his later works, they are often a little disappointed by what they find. Collections like The Book of Sand (which contains the short story “Ulrike”) and Doctor Brodie's Report, which both appeared in the 1970s, are often passed over because they lack the obvious touches of “Borges” associated with metaphysical whimsy and the yellow tigers that stalked the works of an earlier age. Many critics resort to paraphrase instead of analysis, as if there is no more to be done with Borges but reiterate his own tales. Writing about The Book of Sand, Gene Bell-Villada complains that there are “no over-arching concerns, thematic or otherwise. … Although...