Borges comments briefly on Lovecraft' "bogus" story

[Druidic]

http://books.google.com/books?id=gQr...ecraft&f=false

An interesting exchange with Borges here. I read this first when I was 21. I'm still perplexed by his reference to "The Colour out of Space"--for that was the story he refers to-- as "disagreeable and bogus." I suspect the aspect of physical horror in Lovecraft's fiction elicited deep revulsion in Borges; it certainly did in Blackwood and many other critics of the time. Borges attitude toward Lovecraft was, at least on the surface, a complex and contradictory one. (Of course, the two writers had so much in common, Borges could have just found Lovecraft insufferable.)
Bogus could refer to Borges stubborn insistence on seeing Lovecraft as an "unconscious parodist" of Poe. Whatever, Borges seemed drawn to at least some of his tales. A man who read for Borges told how he would read a Lovecraft story, get halfway through, and Borges would begin to argue energetically with the late author. Interesting.
Somewhere in that is the potential for a good story in a Borges tribute anthology.