It is always worth talking to
our elders about art. About almost anything.
BUT If they're alive today, they'll surely re-read Borges, this story,
and be speaking from the same point of view, in part, that we have.
What about looking back at what the critics of the times were saying?
Then again, they didn't have the
advantage of knowing: did his work
age well? Isn’t' it the ultimate goal for most artists to make art /
write stories that age well, even feel better over time? Their work
needs to connect to the past, so that it pleases their fathers and
mothers (etc.) and it needs to last into the future so that it speaks
for them, allows them to live in a favorable light even after they die.