Borges

library of babel

Too bad all of the sold translations are bad now due to manipulation on the part of the estate. The best place to read these books is archive.org

I was recently going through the Borges book “Garden of Branching Paths” which he did in collaboration with his English translator Norman Thomas Di Giovanni. One thing that I was struck by is how much destruction is figured prominently in his work.

In many cases he’s writing about an imperfect memory of a person who is very interesting. I just read the short story “A Glimpse into the Work of Herbert Quain“. In it he writes as someone obituary about an author who wrote books in which you as an a reader might think that you had invented a more interesting ending, as you go and trace back-and-forth through the book. Eventually the character disappears or dies and then this happens in many of four hisses writings about you not like for example fictional biographies or fictional obituaries to free contributors. But at some point he mixes himself with the men with the character he’s describing. And he forces you to trace back through his book and the story ends with a very ambiguous mixing of author and subject.

In any case one other thing this is how bored has left his legacy in the hands of someone who perhaps didn’t fully understand his work. In addition the best word for discredit that led to the sidelining of his translator is effectively a narrator and a reconfiguration of his work very similar to what he describes in for example of the story the lottery where fiction is inserted or omissions are made to give in story.

It really brings to light current events related to the legal attack currently happening on the Internet archive if we go attack that will impact all libraries in the world. It’s incredible how publishers are trying to sort themselves and their greed above the communication of knowledge in the world.

Written via transcription.

https://libraryofbabel.info/

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