Posts Tagged ‘screenplays’
“In order for a book to exist, it is sufficient that it be possible. Only the impossible is excluded.”*…
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.
Judging a cover by its book…
Artist Sharm Murugiah has imagined covers for the (as yet to be published) mass-market paperback editions of Quentin Tarantino’s screenplays. Click here for a zoomable version.
[TotH to GeekTyrant]
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As we confuse our genres and mix our media, we might recall that it was on this date in 1920 that This Side of Paradise was published. Francis Scott Fitzgerald had written a first draft off the novel while stationed in Alabama during World War I; then titled “The Romantic Egotist,” it was rejected. Fitzgerald re-wrote the novel, re-titled it, and got a friend to get it to Maxwell Perkins at Scribners, who took it on and oversaw its polish and publication.
Set in Princeton, This Side of Paradise was the most influential “college novel” of its age, and introduced a new set of perspectives and values that came to characterize a cohort of intra-war writers. Critical reception was ecstatic; sales were strong– and Fitzgerald found instant fame and riches.
Still, the reception of his work wasn’t universally positive: John Grier Hibben, the President of Princeton, lamented “I cannot bear to think that our young men are merely living four years in a country club and spending their lives wholly in a spirit of calculation and snobbishness.”
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