Yesterday I posted Jorge Luis Borges’ little known masterpiece, The Book of Sand. This story was originally published in 1975, in Spanish (Borges is Argentinian), as part of a collection of short stories which is now out of print.
[This post presupposes that you have read The Book of Sand, which I have generously provided in yesterday's posting]
I first ran across references to Borges a couple weeks ago when reading a book on the historical basis for the legend of King Arthur (this incidentally inspired the “Dragon” post some number of days ago). Then the other day, I was reading books that I never intended to buy in a Borders while drinking coffee, as is my wont. In a book about the notion of infinity, I ran across several pages of Borges excerpts. They looked intriguing, and I was in a book store, so I cast about looking for the referenced stories. Unfortunately, as The Book of Sand is out of print, I did not find it. But I located it the next day in my public library.
Similar to The Book of Sand is The Library of Babel, which is about an entire universe that is a library. The library is infinite in all directions and the denizens of the library spend their entire life there. The library is filled with books, no two the same. As the library is infinite in extent, it possesses all possible books. A famous philosopher in this library-universe posited that there must even be one book that contains all the others; and the librarian who reads it is akin to a god.
Besides an irrational love of impossible objects, the thing that draws me most to the Book of Sand is that is a metaphor for the human experience. One can live through events and circumstances of infinite variation, but never return to previous instances in that life. It is also interesting to think how similar the impossible Book of Sand is to the internet. The number of pages that exist might as well be infinite, they are encountered in a semi-random fashion, and its contents are similarly ephemeral.
I have read about twenty of Borges’ short stories now. I would recommend them.
