Matt's Writing

It's Jorge Luis Borges's 114th birthday. Two years ago, I was fortunate to work with the Google Doodle team to provide feedback on the Borges Doodle and write the Google Books blog post explaining the doodle. Google Doodle honoring Jorge Luis Borges on August 24, 2011 by  Sophia Foster-Dimino It's been amazing to see how this Argentinean author's influence has increased over the years, as evidenced by two new books out about Borges. Six years ago, I met Jorge Luis Borges's widow in Buenos Aires, and she showed me his library and archives. This became the basis for my story Meeting Maria Kodama in my first book Papers for the Suppression of Reality . Today, I hold up my mate gourd and bombilla in honor of Borges.

  Jorge Luis Borges wrote fake book reviews of books that didn’t exist. Michael Chabon has taken this postmodern literary conceit beyond Borges. Chabon has not only written fan fiction based on his own writing, but he’s created stores from his fiction in real-life. Take for example Diesel bookstore in Oakland which was converted to Brokeland Records . This fictional record store has replaced the independent bookstore from September 7-14 to correspond with the release of Michael Chabon’s latest novel, Telegraph Avenue . Chabon opening Brokeland Records goes beyond book marketing. It’s an interesting addition to postmodern literary experimentation, in that it raises the question, What happens when a fictional store you’re writing about, becomes real? And this isn’t the first store to be created from Chabon’s fictional work. The Escapist comic bookstore on Claremont Avenue in Berkeley is named after Chabon’s comic creation The Escapist from The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier ...

Today, I published a post on the Google Books blog about the Jorge Luis Borges Google Doodle on Google.com: Inside Google Books: Peering into Jorge Luis Borges’s Labyrinth : Posted by Matt Werner, Technical Writer, Enterprise In honor of Jorge Luis Borges's 112th birthday, Google has prepared a special doodle ...

Matt Werner’s first book of short stories, Papers for the Suppression of Reality , co-authored with Dr. Shaka Freeman will hit bookstores on March 1, 2011. The book is being published by Thought Publishing . You can pre-order a copy of the book here: http://thoughtpublishing.org/purchase/

While in Buenos Aires, Argentina in July and August, 2007, I went to every Jorge Luis Borges-related site I could find. I wrote my undergraduate thesis on Borges, the national writer of Argentina. And on Friday, August 3, 2007, I was very fortunate to meet Borges's widow, Maria Kodama at the Jorge Luis Borges International Foundation at 1660 Anchorena in Buenos Aires: Maria Kodama was a very kind woman, and she also gave me a private tour of Jorge Luis Borges's library: March 2012 Update: I wrote more about this encounter with Maria Kodama, Jorge Luis Borges's widow, in my book Papers for the Suppression of Reality in the story "Meeting Maria Kodama." Learn more about the book .