Labyrinhts (1962) - Jorge Luis Borges POLL

Message Bookmarked
Bookmark Removed
Not all messages are displayed: show all messages (72 of them)

I did not know that. Am definitely going to check it out, thanks.

emil.y, Tuesday, 8 April 2014 17:25 (ten years ago) link

I saw it years ago; it was always available on VHS. Is it out on DVD?

Bryan Fairy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 8 April 2014 17:30 (ten years ago) link

Dunno

You Never Even POLL Me By My Screenname (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 8 April 2014 17:53 (ten years ago) link

http://bit.ly/1itztm9

waterbabies (waterface), Tuesday, 8 April 2014 18:05 (ten years ago) link

saw it years back - not my favourite Borges tbh, and since i don't remember much of it i'm guessing it's not my favourite Bertolucci either

twistent consistent (Noodle Vague), Tuesday, 8 April 2014 20:50 (ten years ago) link

sure it's worth seeing again tho - didn't mean to be sniffy

twistent consistent (Noodle Vague), Tuesday, 8 April 2014 20:53 (ten years ago) link

Gonna be either Garden of Forking Paths or Library of Babel

I read this book by a mathematician exploring the concepts raised in Babel which deepened my appreciation of it. Gets a bit heady at times but it was very approachable, definitely recommend it. For example iirc one of his conclusions was that the Library as described would be larger than the observable universe itself.

http://www.amazon.com/Unimaginable-Mathematics-Borges-Library-Babel/dp/0195334574

anonanon, Tuesday, 8 April 2014 21:07 (ten years ago) link

I've come across that book before--can't remember whether I ended up reading any or not. Both "Library" and "Garden" seem interesting primarily in an information-theory context--what constitutes a message, how much metadata is required to distinguish it from background noise...

One of *my* conclusions about the Library, back when I was younger & had days to spend idly pondering these sorts of things, was that its exhaustion of language corresponds to the regeneration of a second-level language, whose 'characters' would be the individual 410-page volumes of the library, arranged in combinations to form A la recherche du temps perdu, or the King James Bible, or any other work that exceeds 410 pages in length. Theoretically, there's no reason we couldn't use this new protocol to produce an episodic narrative work of indefinite length; but if we tried to draw it out too long, we would eventually be forced to repeat entire 'books' from earlier in the narrative.

Many American citizens are literally paralyzed by (bernard snowy), Tuesday, 15 April 2014 17:32 (ten years ago) link

... anyway, I got somewhat distracted from my original reason for clicking this thread, which was to renew my praise of "There Are More Things", a tragically unappreciated late Borges story that knocks the stuffing out of Danielewski's House of Leaves

Many American citizens are literally paralyzed by (bernard snowy), Tuesday, 15 April 2014 17:37 (ten years ago) link

two weeks pass...

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

System, Thursday, 1 May 2014 00:01 (ten years ago) link

just re-read the Lem piece, as a takedown (or at least, a delineation of Borges' failings) it's pretty cogent

PLATYPUS OF DOOM (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, 1 May 2014 17:29 (ten years ago) link

In general agree, but think "failings" is too harsh a word, its more like a motif or trope or something. It's like saying it is a failing for Piet Mondrian to paint little colored rectangles or Hitchcock to use doubled characters.

Bee Traven Thousand (James Redd and the Blecchs), Thursday, 1 May 2014 17:43 (ten years ago) link

whatta maroon, paint some circles already

j., Thursday, 1 May 2014 18:59 (ten years ago) link

lol

Bee Traven Thousand (James Redd and the Blecchs), Thursday, 1 May 2014 19:08 (ten years ago) link

yeah failings is kind of harsh... limitations, maybe?

PLATYPUS OF DOOM (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, 1 May 2014 23:26 (ten years ago) link

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

System, Friday, 2 May 2014 00:01 (ten years ago) link

Everything that got a zero was robbed. Everything that got a one too.

Bee Traven Thousand (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 2 May 2014 01:41 (ten years ago) link

Feel like you get more insight, or aperçus, as Xgau used to call them, from a negative Lem writeup than from someone else's praise.

'nh' typo in thread title makes me think it is some kind of Portuguese word.

Bee Traven Thousand (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 2 May 2014 01:46 (ten years ago) link

"The Immortal" is the only zero-vote-getter I would really miss if it were gone

endzone selfie (bernard snowy), Friday, 2 May 2014 02:04 (ten years ago) link

three months pass...

http://i.imgur.com/ETLr6SV.jpg

, Sunday, 24 August 2014 19:28 (ten years ago) link

eight years pass...

On his partner/literary executor:

https://www.thedial.world/issue-7/jorge-luis-borges-legacy-maria-kodama

xyzzzz__, Tuesday, 1 August 2023 19:26 (one year ago) link

Haven't checked your link yet, but title reminds me of some discussion on another good old thread: Borges translation?

dow, Wednesday, 2 August 2023 03:07 (one year ago) link

one year passes...

A month since finishing Boswell and I am seeing this.

https://www.nyrb.com/products/borges

xyzzzz__, Saturday, 17 August 2024 13:33 (two months ago) link

Lovely pic of the man above, That Borges eh, he's so crazee, what is he like etc

The link for Lem on Borges above is broken, so here's a sampler and short analysis of it:

http://www.autodidactproject.org/my/borges35_lem05.html

Some quick, dirty thoughts on Lem's critique: Yes, you don't go to Borges for a revelation of the future, he is a chronicler of the deep past of culture, by which I mean its more esoteric elements, even if recent in time. ...” Borges is fundamentally a librarian. But this point of departure is obsolete: “Borges is located near the end of a descending curve which had its culmination centuries ago.” He extrapolates on the cultural heritage of the past, but he has nothing to say about the future.
Yes, but, it occurs to me that climate change is likely to make Borges more relevant in future. I think cults, superstitions, nature-worship, broken knowledge, cultural paradoxes and bizarreries are likely to proliferate, and the
technology that Borges reveres, the book, with its anecdotal/encyclopedic properties is likely to be necessary as a means of recording and communicating in a world where powering modern tech becomes more fraught. Parts of the world may become unexplored and unreachable again. There will be sightings of more creatures fit to inhabit the Manual de zoología fantástica as environment pressures evolutionary change.
Basically the future is going to look more like the past than Lem thought, though he says "For we are building newer, richer, and more terrible paradises and hells; but in his books Borges knows nothing about them." No Borges knows that there is nothing new under the sun, we have just forgotten the past. Maybe technology is Borges' blind spot, but I would argue technology is a replication of systems or sights already existing in nature (and even to some extent in ancient technology, whether we mean oral storytelling or hieroglyphics) and that's something Borges grasps. He understands that the infinite comprehends everything and so we can just as well look at the past in its spiraling infinities and that helps us to understand the present and the future, which are not really distinct.

That's how I see it anyway.

I expect to get ripped for this, but just some Saturday thoughts. Fuckit post

glumdalclitch, Saturday, 17 August 2024 14:12 (two months ago) link

nah i agree Lem was talking nonsense the internet is wholly Borgesian

the news is terrible, i'm in the clear (Noodle Vague), Saturday, 17 August 2024 14:14 (two months ago) link


You must be logged in to post. Please either login here, or if you are not registered, you may register here.