"There Are More Things" is a SHORT STORY written by Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges in 1975. It was first published in the short story collection The Book of Sand, as the collection's fourth entry. The story tells of the encounter the narrator has with a monstrous entity inhabiting an equally monstrous house. It bears the dedication "In Memory of H. P. Lovecraft" and accordingly holds many parallels with Lovecraft's stories, employing similar plot devices.The title alludes to Hamlet's lines "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy". The story has been criticized because the episode of the encounter with the monster and the house—the heart of the story—which is described in the final two or so pages, is preceded by "eight pages of complicated subplots," spoiling "a basically sound idea. Borges himself was quite skeptical about his memorial to Lovecraft (as expressed in the book's epilogue), whom he in fact considered "an involuntary parodist of Poe."
Author
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo, usually referred to as Jorge Luis Borges (Spanish pronunciation: [xoɾxe lwis boɾxes]), was an Argentine writer and poet born in Buenos Aires. In 1914, his family moved to Switzerland where he attended school and traveled to Spain. On his return to Argentina in 1921, Borges began publishing his poems and essays in Surrealist literary journals. He also worked as a librarian and public lecturer. Borges was fluent in several languages. He was a target of political persecution during the Peron regime, and supported the military juntas that overthrew it. Due to a hereditary condition, Borges became blind in his late fifties. In 1955, he was appointed director of the National Public Library (Biblioteca Nacional) and professor of Literature at the University of Buenos Aires. In 1961, he came to international attention when he received the first International Publishers' Prize Prix Formentor. His work was translated and published widely in the United States and in Europe. He died in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1986. J. M. Coetzee said of Borges: "He, more than anyone, renovated the language of fiction and thus opened the way to a remarkable generation of Spanish American novelists."
