Much as I’ve tried to feel differently, I’ve always liked the idea of Borges much more than the actual writings of Borges. But on this, his 112th birthday, I came across “Borges, a Blind Writer With Insight,” a 1971 New York Times interview with the Argentine writer, who apparently appeared on the Today show right around that time. An excerpt:

“Today his short stories — some hardly dawdle past a paragraph — appear in The New Yorker, and they are collected in books. Essences of essences. Labyrinths within mazes within mirrors.
When he comes to this country — he is here on a visit now — he has an utterly respectful audience. How many Latin-American authors are so well translated? He is naturally taken as a candidate for elevation to the Nobel Prize.
Beware! Who knows what this Imaginary Being will say next? On the Today show on television he invoked the name of Gustave Flaubert, and actually whispered a book’s title in excellent French. The effect could not have been more startling had he changed into a Hippogriff and pecked at the startled interviewer.
Replying to questions, he draws from the cadences of memory. Borges says, ‘At my age [71], what can I do but plagiarize what I’ve already said, no?’
What shall a writer be in the glare of glosses on glosses and endless honors? Scholars consecrate volumes to his carefully turned ironies. Is he a Domesticated Industry?
Borges lives on the north side of Buenos Aires. Recently he took a taxi to the National Library on the south side. The taxi driver said, ‘Are you by any chance Borges?’
Borges said ‘Well, more or less’ or ‘I think so.'”