Tag Archives: Week 16

Final Project: To Be a “Man of the Book”

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In 1941, Jorge Luis Borges published his short story, “The Library of Babel.” This winding labyrinthine narrative details an infinite library in which every possible book written in every conceivable language is stored within the hexagonal rooms. The librarians of Babel wander through the library and dedicate their lives to reading as many of these books as possible. Some rarely leave the vicinity of the hexagons that they were born in while others search for the Vindications, books that detail someone’s entire life. Others devote their lives to finding what Borges describes as the book of all books, which is theoretically the cipher to the entire library. The desire to learn it all fuels their search and they become consumed by it. 

This book of all books is the heart of my project and led me to create the impossible through the form of an artist book. Taking inspiration from the artist books we examined in Special Collections and Amaranth Borsuk’s “The Book,” I created an artist book that utilizes tunnel binding to create the illusion of infinity and capture the weight of Borges’ work. Each hexagon slowly became a room in the library, complete with bookshelves that span the walls and a stray librarian wandering through. I used watercolor paints to add depth and dimension before attaching each paper to an accordion folded strip of paper. This allows the reader to pull the pages out and see the illusion of infinity when looking through the cut out. In Borsuk’s “The Book,” she describes tunnel books, “When fully extended and viewed through an opening in the cover, the tunnel book’s superimposed flat planes create the illusion of depth.” This description inspired me to create a tunnel book in order to portray the infinite in a way that was conceivable. Even the title, taken from a quote of the short story, “The Library exists ab aeterno.” On the back of the first panel, I wrote the first few opening lines from “The Library of Babel.” Due to the construction of the artist book, the reader would have to dismantle and possibly damage the book in order to read the quote. This detail alludes to the frantic destruction of the Library of Babel that some of the librarians caused in search of the Vindications. What I hoped to achieve with this project is to demonstrate the fanatic need to pursue knowledge, to pursue more. We live in a time where information is quite literally at our fingertips and we have become oversaturated with new publications. Due to this, Borges’ work remains prevalent even nearly 85 years later as he demonstrates the deep rooted fanaticism that surrounds books and the pursuit of knowledge. 

Borges’ narrator is one of the many librarians who explains the unusual inner workings of the library and how different librarians navigate the books and mythos of the library. He recounts the many theories surrounding the library, and how it was determined to be infinite. He states, “when it was proclaimed that the Library comprised all books, the first impression was one of extravagant joy. All men felt themselves lords of a secret, intact treasure. There was no personal or universal problem whose eloquent solutions did not exist– in some hexagon. The universe was justified, the universe suddenly expanded to the limitless dimensions of hope.” The overwhelming joy at discovering the library is infinite is similar to the introduction of the internet. There were hardly any regulations on what could and could not be done on the internet. This freedom seizes the librarians and leads them into chaos. At first, having all knowledge at hand seems like a good thing as every single problem would have a solution. However, it creates more problems. Borges notes that the librarians became consumed by the possibilities that the library had to offer and sparked their interest in the Vindications. In their search for these biographies, the librarians were frenzied in their lonely searching, abandoning their hexagons, murdering one another, and destroying books in the process. The pursuit of knowledge becomes a dangerous quest that taunts the seeker.

Further in the short story, Borges introduces the concept of ‘the Man of the Book.”  Borges writes, “We know, too, of another superstition of that time: the Man of the Book. In some shelf of some hexagon, men reasoned, there must exist a book which is the cipher and perfect compendium of all the rest: some librarian has perused it, and it is analogous to a god.” The concept of the Man of the Book is at the root of my project. The idea of someone discovering and reading the cipher to all knowledge is incredibly moving and it fuels the librarians’ desire to learn more and strive to become a Man of the Book. To read and absorb everything means that they are well rounded in their research and knowledge. Today, readers attempt to read and collect books as fast as they possibly can because there is an incredible influx of media to consume. However it is impossible to read all of it. In Gabriel Zaid’s book, “So Many Books: Reading and Publishing in an Age of Abundance,” he confronts the issue of the overabundance of books and how it is just not possible to read every book published. In his book, Zaid writes, “When we say that books should be read by everyone, we aren’t thinking. Our simple physical limitations make it impossible for us to read 99.9 percent of the books that are written. Humankind writes more than it can read. If for every book published one or two languish unpublished, then two or three million books are written every year.” Much like the librarians’ work being futile, it is impossible today for a reader to attempt to read everything. In order to become a Man of the Book, we must be more open to conversation and piece together information gathered from other people. Zaid remediates these concerns with the suggestion that readers do not need to read everything. Rather, readers should not focus on reading everything but dabble in anything. The conversations drawn together by various media sparks more connection between people.  In order to become a Man of the Book, we must be more open to conversation and piece together information gathered from other people. 

In conclusion, Borges’ short story, “The Library of Babel” explores the fanaticism of the pursuit of knowledge. We must be aware of the dangers that go along with the search for more. In a time where the market is saturated with new media nearly everyday, it becomes apparent that everything cannot be consumed. Rather, we should focus on cultivating community and inviting conversation to combat the desire to read everything.

Works Cited

Borges, Jorge Luis. “The Library of Babel.” Ficciones. 1941. Grove Press. 

Borsuk, Amaranth, “The Book.” The MIT Press. 2018

Zaid, Gabriel. “So Many Books: Reading and Publishing in an Age of Abundance.” Translated by Natasha Wimmer. 2003. Paul Dry Press. 

What Will Be Saved?

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I don’t have to live forever, and neither does my work. I don’t necessarily want most of my work to outlive me. Someone might save it, anyway.

I think, when I started writing with the intent to be published, some part of it was because I wanted to be known, remembered, maybe immortalized. When I first started writing as a kid, I don’t think I put much thought into whether my stories would survive the test of time. I did want to be famous, though. I wanted to be known by strangers. I wanted to change someone’s life. Maybe subconsciously I wanted to be remembered, but I wasn’t really thinking about what would happen after my death. I wanted to feel it all while I was still alive.

At some point, though, I started writing for the future. It stopped mattering whether I become well-known in this life. I began to write for future archivists, scholars, students, and writers (sometimes addressing them directly). I write so that my words can speak for me when I’m gone.

That vague maybe-future wasn’t my only reason for writing, though. I write for the people around me. I write for my friends and family who want to read my writing. I write for my fellow writers in the creative writing MFA. I write for my classmates, professors, and mentors. I write for the living writers whose work I adore. I write so that people might respond to my work, and I might get to read those responses.

Mostly, though, I have to write for me. I have to write to get these ideas out of my head and onto the page, because I’m the only one who can. That’s why I write hypertext and other e-lit. Hypertext is how my brain works. I use Twine/HTML because it allows me to make the whole book, not just the text inside it. Digital Humanities last semester gave me confidence that my hypertext could be considered literature. Now, BOOKS!! has given me the confidence that I am writing books when I write hypertext. Not just writing books, I’m following in a long line of bookmakers who use whatever technology is available to them in order to show their ideas to the world. I know much more about that history after taking this class.

In this class, we saw hundreds of books and other book-ish objects in the archives. We saw a whole collection of zines, which were made to be read immediately, by people in the zinester’s immediate vicinity, not necessarily to be saved for the future. My midterm project was on Typo Bilder Buch, a book with no intended purpose, printed on paper towels, a work of ephemerality, saved by the archive. One work from the additional class readings, Agrippa (A Book of the Dead), used computer code to convert an electronic poem into genetic code as it’s read. Over time, it would lose all meaning. However, archivists have preserved the work and its meaning for future readers. This is the power of archivists. Archivists can and will and do save these works, and other works like them.

We can all be archivists. We can all, in the spirit of Benjamin, cultivate a collection of these memory-storing objects we call books. My archive includes my favorite books from childhood, my favorite textbooks from undergrad, my favorite novels and collections of poetry and short stories and essays. It includes programs from readings that I’ve attended and where I have read my own work. It includes about a dozen notebooks which I’ve filled with story ideas, poetry, journals, drawings, and absolute nonsense. I saved it all for myself, not because I expect that someone else will want it someday. However, someone might try to save it. Same with hypertext. Maybe it will become obsolete, but someone might try to emulate or recreate it.

This is what this class has taught me. Once the book is published, neither the author nor the publisher gets to decide what happens to it. It may be loved, criticized, remembered, forgotten, uncovered, taken out of context, stolen, pirated, plagiarized, or archived. What I want saved will likely be lost, and what I want burned after my death will likely be the things people most want to save. A terrifying idea to some, but to me, it’s half the fun.

Remediated Thinking-Final Thoughts

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As a graduate student, this class has really opened my eyes to things I’ve never really even thought about. Despite working so closely with literature and books, I never once took a step back to see how books take on different forms and mediums. I now have a greater understanding and a broader perspective on what a book is, not just what I thought it was or what I was told it is. But to me, the thing that really struck me was the remediated fears. Questions that come up at the dawn of a new revolutionary age have already been asked and will continue to be asked.

I remember my first day when we were all asked what brought us to this class, and I remember answering that it was because I was scared of AI and where that direction in the future seemed to be taking us, which frightened me. From what I’ve seen and continue to see is how this new tool is almost like a Pandora’s box, and we really have no idea where it can go and how we use it, but learning that this fear was, in fact, not a new one at all, was almost shocking. And the fact that the book itself was also a sort of disruptor was even more shocking. That quote from Victor Hugo’s Notre Dame de Paris really struck me: “Ceci tuera cela.” “This will kill that,” and now I feel like I, too, stood there like Claude Frollo, realizing the death of something and the birth of something new. But that was before this class. Because we examined and questioned everything about the book as an object, interface, all different kinds of media, I feel more comfortable and optimistic, as this has happened before, and it led to a renaissance, industrialization, and political change, etc…In other words, the written word is integral to us, in whatever form it is delivered to us.

I now have a completely different understanding of a poetry book I read before and after this class. But during a chapter in Borsuk’s book, I was reminded of it and really excited to use it in my final project. I’m happy to have taken this class and that it had this impact on me. I don’t think I’ll ever see a book the same without deconstructing it.