Mark Twain on Jane Austen
In his “Autobiographical Essay” at the end of The Aleph and Other Stories, Borges mentions how much he dislikes his first seven books:
In fact, when in 1953 my present publisher — Emece — proposed to bring out my “complete writings,” the only reason I accepted was that it would allow me to keep those preposterous volumes suppressed. This reminds me of Mark Twain’s suggestion that a fine library could be started by leaving out the works of Jane Austen, and that even if that library contained no other books it would still be a fine library, since her books were left out (pp. 230-231).
I don’t agree with Twain, and I don’t know that Borges does either, but I found that comment amusing, and all the more so since Borges is applying the comment to his early works.