Short but layered and thought-provoking. ( )

*Cross-posted on Wordpress

Completely confounding. An intriguing idea poorly executed. Even reading slowly didn't improve understanding. Beautifully written sentences were meaningless without much background or context.

I honestly didn't perceive the allegory; the library representing the universe, its books filled with information detailing everything within it, though in an incomprehensible manner - multiple languages represented in each volume.

Unending patience and a generous mood are required for this one. I possessed neither. I expected more from this 1001 author.

*South American (Argentina) read for the Dead Writers Society's 2014 'Around the World' challenge. ( )

There's literally a whole other book been written on the mathematics of this story alone, and there's also (of course) the matter of a certain elephant in the room--which is to say an infinite number of elephants on an infinite number of typewriters . . . . So I'll limit myself to the allegorical interpretation that leaps out at me: This is a fable of the tension at the centre of meaningmaking, the perpetual singularity of turning data into information. How do we deal with this endless shrieking imperative? What do we do when we realize our library is infinite? (And it's important to remember that that doesn't make it total. There are an infinite number of numbers between one and ten but none of them is eleven; a book can be any book, and it can be a book about staircases or about the impossibility of a book being like a staircase or a refutation of said impossibility or a book structured like a staircase, but it can't be a staircase. [Wait, is that even true? What about a book printed on a staircase? What about a staircase made of stacks of books?]


What we do first is we retreat into cabalism, the search for absolute essence in words. We say "it may be impossible to know what these books mean. We may never know if that is Moby-Dick or Go Dog Go written in some infinitely intricate code. BUT what we can do is understand the patterns here--the intrinsic nature of the words,the metameaning of their place in the alphabet and position on the page and adding them all uppp . . . ." We can defer that way, like believing that the word "gold" contains some essential information about the thing gold. And we can make meaning. But we'll be wrong.



Or we can defer the other way, say "hey, we're no primitive cabalists. What is the essence of being? Following Descartes, ratiocination. What is the essence of language? Self-evidently, to communicate the ideas that we each develop independently through sense-experience. What is the essence of the library? It is the depository of our knowledge. Where do we draw that knowledge from? From the library. Where do we put it? In the library. What do we communicate with? (Language.) Where do we learn that language? In the library. What possibly can be the nature of the library, when we are deriving it from itself to construct it anew?" And we languish, and we try to posit some state of library outside the Library. And it's meaningful, but wrong.



And then we regroup, a little bit chilly and with an ominous thoat-tickle, a little bit scared. But we say "We see that pure reason puts the cart before the horse. We have tape recorders and comparative etymology and the enigma machine and the smartest minds in the business, God damn it, and we're not going to get all superstitious about numinous meanings and the Crimson Hexagon and the god-man who read all the books. No, we are going to st down, study this stuff, find the patterns and draw the conclusions. But AS SOON AS we do that--as soon as we move just from describing what we see to making generalizations or being heuristic or categorical--we're mythmaking, meaningmaking, again. And we're wrong.



And so we turn to representation, and we write this story. And we turn to figuration, and start talking about the library like it's a library, when we know it's something else entirely. And we turn to the internet and deconstruct each other's ideas about what the library is, with sniping. And millennial cults and book-burners appear, and the blood-dimmed tide swells and recedes. That's where the Babel comes in.



This is nothing less than a recapitulation of the entirety of Western thought, and the impossibility of keeping up the balance of imagination, deduction and induction that allows us to make any sense of the world, and the ultimate inadequacy of all assumption, description, perception, interaction with it. As soon as we let go of falsity we are paralyzed, because the truth is too big to be borne.As soon as we let go of the belief in truth we are paralyzed--paralyzed by fear. ( )

i really enjoyed this. it's short enough that instead of reading a review, read it yourself. seriously. and it's fun, too. ( )