(Roughly) Daily

One of your correspondent’s daily pleasures is Rusty Foster‘s newsletter, Today in Tabs. Here, an especially pleasing excerpt…

In 1941, Jorge Luis Borges wrote a short story called “The Library of Babel.” If you haven’t read it, or if it’s been a while, go read it now. It’s only eight pages. If that’s all this email accomplishes for you today, I’ll consider it a success.

In its finite but innumerable books, Borges’ Library contains every possible arrangement of letters. In 2015 Jonathan Basile made LibraryofBabel.info, a website that not only accomplishes this but is even searchable. Here’s one of the 10²⁹ pages that just say “today in tabs.” Here’s the last line of The Great Gatsby. Can you find it? If not, don’t worry, it shows up embedded in 29³¹⁴¹ more pages of gibberish. How about this page? It implicitly existed before I searched for it, which I find kind of upsetting.

But as interesting/disturbing as the Library’s content is, I’m also fascinated by the physical structure of it. Picture a cross between “The Name of Rose” and “House of Leaves.” A sort of infinite scriptorium designed by bees…

Enlightened, solitary, infinite, perfectly unmoving, armed with precious volumes, pointless, incorruptible, and secret: “The Library of Babel,” from @fka_tabs.

See also “Visit The Online Library of Babel: New Web Site Turns Borges’ “Library of Babel” Into a Virtual Reality, source of the image above.

* Jorge Luis Borges, “The Library of Babel”

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As we check it out, we might send thoughtfully and warmly observed birthday greetings to David John Lodge; he was born on this date in 1935. An author, critic, and professor of literature, he has written 18 novels, a baker’s dozen works of nonfiction (plus two memoirs), three plays, and four teleplays. He’s probably best remembered for his wonderful “Campus Trilogy” – Changing Places: A Tale of Two Campuses (1975), Small World: An Academic Romance (1984) and Nice Work (1988), the second two of which were each shortlisted for the Booker Prize.

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