Borges's Library of Babel: Ctrl + F for meaning

The Do You Even Lit boys put down the heavy tomes and choose a short story. Well, we're not sure if it counts as a story. Maybe a thought experiment?



This week we’re talking about one of our favourite authors: Jorge Luis Borges. We read The Library of Babel, Borges’s classic meditation on infinity (well, not infinity exactly — but an almost-might-as-well-be infinity). There are a lot of books.

Nonsense: Not to complain about pLoT hOlEz, but we take slight issue with the fact that it's no feasible for a librarian to find any coherent passages, even if the library contains everything collectively.

How would you know? We worry about the metaphysical horror of not being able to know you found the book with all the codes in it even if you found it. We're reassured by reminding ourselves that we won't stumble across

The library: How are the hexagons actually connected? Can you piss off the railing? Was it designed to be pissed off? And if you jumped, which book would you bring on the way down?

CHAPTERS

(0:11) Banter and boners

(2:13) Thought experiments vs short stories

(4:28) Summary

(06:07) How many books is it really?

(08:23) It'd all be nonsense, practically speaking

(10:23) Metaphysical layers 1 and 2

(18:06) the real world website

(21:10) Falling down the shaft

(27:06) No author doesn't quite hit the same

(39:06) How do they have history?

(44:30) What does the library look like?

(47:25) Multiverse

(59:03) Wrap up

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