#borgesian

[patienz]

[huayno]

what the god of the used book market said about all books in existence forming one giant book through their intertextuality

[pansy1993]

happy monday :)

[transgenderer]

LLMs are an improbably borgesian thing to exist. like. if AIs, with the specific relationship to language a modern LLM has, had shown up in most sci fi stories this would be really weird and distinctive and remarkable. but a borges short story with this premise would be totally normal. he was onto something about the nature of language, maybe?

[jmreynolds]

Shadespire: The Mirrored City is one of the books I'm fondest of, though it's a weird one - it's a Borgesian riff, filtered through Warhammer sensibilities. Things happen, because they've always happened and will continue to happen. Round and round we go.

I think they let me go nuts with this one because it genuinely didn't matter. It was a tie-in to a then-low man on the totem pole specialist game, and though they hemmed and hawed about a series, I knew better. So I threw it all into the first one, and did something enjoyable - for me, at least.

I threw in all sorts of wildness - predatory entities that even the Chaos Gods shied away from, time loops, crumbling Carcosan architecture, feral statuary, Piranesi references, Borges references, and Khornate sing-alongs.

Anyway, if you're interested in a tie-in novel about recursive time-loops, bestial architecture and a place where the dead can never die, check it out. E-books can still be had from most online retailers, including Black Library.

[gnomebud]

started severance. i am obsessed. it’s very borgesian has anyone said that. surely somebody else has said that

[emer-al]

the problem with CARI is that it’s not very rigid and they’ve only struck upon about 3 - 4 interesting categories that are correctly generalized as they are on the site. it’s not really an encyclopedia ig (aspiring to be) but seeks to put forth an argument towards developing a consumer aesthetics vernacular, which is good and noble, but is basically wholly underprepared to do so. it needs more historiography rather than a vibes based aesthetic grouping of disparate objects, certainly needs much more periodization within groupings of high and low styles, they should really be tracking creative directors, brands specifically, credited designers, architects, interior decorators etc. there’s kind of a debate about how baudrillard you get with it; I think food is much more a vessel for advertising content these days, is the color of a sandwich postmodern? should be considered. etc. really the ultimate solution is that some sort of index of all advertising material ever made would be appended as a department of the library of congress with mandatory reporting to some sort of memetic FDA but that’s neither here nor there. practically a borgesian fantasy exercise. all of this to say that global village coffeehouse is a coherent aesthetic category that can be quantified but hipness purgatory isn’t but it can be imagined if you squint, and the fact of needing to squint is the problem. the impulse behind CARI comes from squinting curators and not historians and people who can untangle the mess of the ultimate layart of advertising, the one the world runs on. and all caveated to say that this is only a noble goal for a kind of hunched over bureaucrat to do, and would be an industrial-academic effacement of life to anyone else. just some thoughts

[elancholia]

Nothing ever happens

Culture has always been shit

Recently, I have been forced to wonder which Sam Kriss bit or bits will end up being repeated as fact by mainstream publications and whether or not this has happened already. When will he first make it onto Wikipedia? Or, rather, how much of Wikipedia is already, directly or indirectly, his work? What about the textbooks? How much of what we know of history was fabricated within the last decade by a lone blogger with a Borgesian sense of humour and a talent for plausibility?

But why not go further? In his commentary on Herodotus, now mostly lost, the Hellenistic philosopher Ephictitius of Kos speculated that all events conventionally regarded as historical were fundamentally mythological, a sort of mad reverse Euhemerism which subsumed all memory of the human past into commentaries on present-day neuroses and inner psychological archetypes. Herodotus, if indeed there had been such a person, was only engaged in the tradition of externalising the internal which had generated all culture since the beginning of time. To Ephictitius, there was no past: only the bit. But why?

Anthropologists have long speculated on the origins of the cannibalism taboo. Currently, their most favoured explanations revolve around the transmission of pathogens. When we consume the flesh of animals, we are exposed only to foreign sicknesses — diseases optimised to fell cows and deer and fish. When we consume each other's products, there is no such obstacle. Humans believe falsehoods because falsehoods, unlike reality, unlike even the real nature of human-created events, are adapted to the environment of the human mind. After all, they were born of it, squeezed out from its dark and twisting caverns.

Ephictitius, though he could not have expressed it as we do, understood this. He named the literary effluent of this endless, voracious, self-devouring cultural ferment ὁ πυλών τῆς σκωρίας: "the pillar of excrement".

To this, the modern world has given another name: shitposting.

[economicsresearch]

page 573 - or I've been telling tales out of school and it has all been a delightful Borgesian fever dream. A school science project that went too far.

[girafeduvexin]

The thing about Christopher Nolan is that he is undoubtedly the best director to adapt Borges to the big screen, and all of his movies are clearly Borgesian derivatives. However, I don't think Borges's writing was ever truly meant to be adapted for the big screen.

[dedederedeconstructivist]

its coming alright. Looking at probably ten thousand words of weird in-universe (but not in-universe if you follow) eva taxonomy because... I dunno, I like taxonomy?

To be serious for a moment, that's what this is. I know there's been a lot of writing about why nerds like taxonomy - that to name is to control, to exercise authority, to assert a claim to status or flatten a world into easily knowable and divisible categories etc - but fundamentally, I just like naming things and pretending to be a taxonomist. It's pattern recognition and wordplay paired together into a sort of byzantine protocol of play that takes something extremely serious and asserts a claim to take the tools and language of that thing and use them for frivolities.

It's also not wrong that to name is to hold power, but this I think is actually a fundamentally human thing. Humans name things - we have segments of our brains dedicated to doing so and to remembering our internal taxonomy as how we see the world. We look at the world and assemble these patterns and give them names that, in turn, give us joy to think about if we let them. There's an organizing logos in the human brain and, dare I say it, soul that enjoys this. So... Why not just... do it?

In that sense, I want my taxonomies to be the opposite of gatekeeping. I don't want people to look at how I've decided that Sachiel is L. monohastatus and go 'okay, I guess dddrd knows best'. I want them to laugh and then go 'yeah but why isn't energy projection more important than adamiformism?' and have fun drafting some elaborate reply in High Academic Camp or in some spectacular Borgesian mode or even from a Japanese perspective of toku show monsters. Like the bread tag folks - there's something kind of beautiful about that whole thing, where some proper geeks are having a kind of fun that speaks deeply to them because it scratches that internal taxonomizing itch and lets them play and its all because they saw a piece of plastic with a shape.

I don't know that much of the writing on Nerds and Taxonomy has looked at it from this angle - but then, so much nerd taxonomy isn't about play, but about those urges to name as control and derive The One Right Position. But maybe it should return to being about play instead, like speculative biology is - like giving the animals in my garden silly taxa because it makes me laugh to assign the niche taxa of 'dingus reptilius friendus' to the blue tongue lizard that keeps eating my mandarins. If human nature sees the world and starts sorting into categories, I wanna have fun with it. the world's hard enough without abandoning the inner monkey brain that likes sorting things.

[essektheylyss]

Wait hilarious that Borges's "The Duration of Hell" happened to be one of the short pieces I read this morning, I don't have time to do a Borgesian commentary on the Raven Queen's discussion of the afterlife in Exandria today but god I really fucking want to

[mercerislandbooks]

A Pleasing Terror

Brad is taking over the blog today, sharing his passion for horror and his lovingly crafted Haunted Bookshelf (all his own original artwork!) — Lori

Brad: Each October, as the air turns crisp and the nights grow longer, I share my love of ghost stories with our customers by adorning one of our display tables with spooky artwork and spookier tomes. I call it The Haunted Bookshelf. Cue howling wind and clanking chains!

I can trace my love of horror and Halloween to my years growing up in suburban New Jersey. In the early 1970s New York’s WPIX broadcast a program called Chiller Theatre, a repackaging of 30s, 40s, and 50s horror movies hosted by Zacherley. To this day I can remember the thrill of terror I felt watching a floating skeleton back actress Carol Ohmart into a pool of acid in The House on Haunted Hill. I was so freaked out that I had nightmares for weeks. I couldn’t wait to see more. And, while I loved the Frankenstein monster, the Wolf Man, and the Mummy, it was haunted houses that I looked forward to visiting most.

Unfortunately, the majority of haunted house movies are cheats, with the “ghosts” exposed as conniving relatives, greedy prospectors, or bumbling bank robbers by film’s end. Even my beloved floating skeleton is revealed to be a surprisingly complicated puppet, manipulated and voiced by Vincent Price. Eventually I discovered that the authentic haunted houses I craved were found in books. I’m sure my horror library started with Stephen King, but soon I was adding H.P. Lovecraft, Shirley Jackson, and many more.

Let us begin with arguably the 20th century’s finest ghost story writer, Montague Rhodes James. Between 1904 and 1925, James penned 4 slim books of ghost stories which have been collected in two annotated volumes, Count Magnus and other Ghost Stories and A Haunted Doll’s House and Other Ghost Stories. The first time I read “Oh, Whistle, and I Will Come to You, My Lad”, I got actual goose bumps when the specter made its startling appearance. Unlike the subtle haunts in tales by Henry James and Edith Wharton, M.R. James’ ghostly manifestations manifest! Often horribly. As the author himself remarked, in the essay “Ghosts—Treat Them Gently!”:

...our ghost should make himself felt by gradual stirrings diffusing an atmosphere of uneasiness before the final flash or stab of horror. Must there be horror? You ask. I think so.

Agreed!

Carmilla is the classic lesbian vampire story, written by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu in 1871 and responsible for as many imitations as there are stars in the night sky above the heroine’s gothic Austrian schloss. However, the 2019 Lanternfish Press edition is a different beast, with an introduction by novelist Carmen Maria Machado, restoring a disturbing backstory to this often-told tale. Or does it? I am hesitant to ruin the fun here, so I will just say that if the term Borgesian means anything to you then this edition belongs on your bookshelf next to the original text.

Finally, as we move back through literary time, we arrive at The Oceans of Cruelty: Twenty-Five Tales of a Corpse Spirit. In this ancient Hindi story, retold here by Douglas J. Penick, a hapless young king, in thrall to an evil sorcerer, must bear a corpse spirit on his back as the grotesque husk whispers stories into his ear. Not unlike Princess Scheherazade’s stories from The Thousand and One Nights, the corpse spirit’s tales are full of moral lessons, family dramas, and occasional horrors. Not only is this book charmingly weird, but Penick’s introduction, about the stories his mother read to him as a child, is wonderful.

So, thank you for visiting the Haunted Bookshelf, and as Zacherley would say: Goodnight Whatever You Are!

— Brad

[thequietabsolute]

Hello! I was appreciatively looking through your blog, and was curious: in a reblog of a Baudrillard quote (something like “Art is dead … [and] … has been confused with its own image”) you disagreed in the tags. I’d love to know your thoughts on why, if you don’t mind sharing them.

[i’ll post the Baudrillard quote in question below, for people just coming across this]

Hello, thanks for your question, and kind words; I don’t mind at all.

First, and most importantly of all. ‘Art is dead.’ In contemplating this statement: abjure your intellect and instead, for a moment, listen to the body. Ask yourself what you experience, and whether art is alive.

After that try this: make a slightly pouty, disappointed face and, one fist against your hip, say aloud ‘Art is dead !!’ … without making yourself laugh.

Baurdrillard’s in a funk here and just talking big. I recognise this line of thinking in myself sometimes. Speaking in large round denunciations is a real kick. I don’t castigate him for this, and his writing is well formed and provocative. Fine qualities, in my book — yet at source, this particular sentiment is merely a semi-hysterical reaction to sheer satiation of data I think, a point of view formed beyond the boundary line of dissipation. One reads, listens, views, discusses, dreams even, incessantly … until you reach a point where reference and connection, in everything, endlessly spools and crisscrosses in a sort of Borgesian organised-chaos and, often, instead of being pleasurably intoxicated by this, it induces in one a kind of wrecking impulse. I think a certain sort of person – a bit grandiose this but let’s call them art-worshippers – I think most of us feel this dissipation from time to time. The ego plays a big part in this too: ‘I see all their tricks; they can’t fool me.’ After writing the Sirens episode in Ulysses Joyce, the great music lover, complained for years that he couldn’t enjoy it any longer. Explaining this in a letter he said miserably, ‘Music: I can suddenly see through it all.’

Oddly enough and pertinent to Baudrillard’s statement, I read a curious book this year, non-fiction, called ‘Reality Hunger’ by David Shields. The title alone does a lot of the heavy lifting for me in trying to explain it, but broadly he explores through our various conditional responses to art our corresponding sense of reality – the pleasurable and its obverse – in a collection of around 600 quotes he’s gathered over the decades, interspersed with his own thoughts and observations: crucially, after each aphoristic reference, some generationally famous, many less so, and of course his own original words, he never states who the quotes are from (for legal reasons he begrudgingly appends their names at the back of the book, but provides a cutting line on the inner margin of each page and asks you to take the scissors to them) and so it forms after not very long an ever-increasing eerie experience for the reader with the effect of creating a curious interplay and loop of reference that, in the end, is seemingly connected to everything else certainly within but also much externally; becoming in totality, for me at least, its own living artistic expression. Now, this is fascinating because Shields on many days you suspect would wholeheartedly agree with the Baurdillard statement and yet, by dint of his own book, one often expressing this concord of feeling, proves it defunct.

Joyce, via his obsession with the enlightenment historian and philosopher Giambattista Vico, is the great artistic patron of this cyclical motif, where everything is (or was; or will be in the future) potentially everything else, and history itself, over large swathes of time and incalculable complexity, falls within the gravity and metric of some unknown universal fractal-like law. Both Ulysses and Finnegans Wake, I’d argue, above all other characteristics, is about this, and where for Baurdrillard (at least here) this is a drag, for Joyce it is the life and wellspring of all art and, indeed, human existence.

——————————————-

[obsessioncollector]

On a serious note this is very sinister and deeply racist (from the context I assume he's referring to indigenous Latin American languages?) but also the concept of "truly foreign languages" that "nobody speaks" is so beautiful and Borgesian to me. Things that would be so cool if they were true

[togglesbloggle]

@ritterum put up his collected 'translation' work for the Loom of Hours project on AO3. Seeing it all in once place is quite enchanting; I think it's much easier to see the 'thing' it's doing (in the Borgesian sense) when they're all next to one another, and there are themes that really only emerge in the juxtaposition.

It's a smidge under half done, I believe. Or I assume so- the introduction promises sixteen hours total.