#tlön uqbar orbis tertius

[gbfmi1]

rip jorge luis borges you would've loved tumblr collectively manifesting Goncharov into being

[bracketsoffear]

Fibble (Dale E. Basye) "When Marlo Fauster claims she has switched souls with her brother, she gets sent straight to Fibble, the circle of Heck reserved for liars. But it’s true—Milton and Marlo have switched places, and Marlo finds herself trapped in Milton’s gross, gangly body. She also finds herself trapped in Fibble, a three-ring media circus run by none other than P. T. Barnum, an insane ringmaster with grandiose plans and giant, flaming pants. Meanwhile Milton, as Marlo, is working at the devil’s new television network, T.H.E.E.N.D. But there’s something strange about these new shows. Why do they all air at the same time? And are they really broadcasting to the Surface? Soon Milton and Marlo realize that they need each other to sort through the lies and possibly prevent the end of the world—if Bea “Elsa” Bubb doesn’t catch them first.

The Fauster twins are caught up in yet another apocalyptic scheme as hellish figures plot to stoke a ratings war into a holy war, using elaborate lies and propaganda to provoke the end of humanity itself."

Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius (Jorge Luis Borges) "A short story concerning the author and his friend stumbling upon a mention of the Uqbar region in an encyclopedia, a place which is found in no other literature. One of the myths of Uqbar concerns Tlön, a fantastical place where people do not believe in the reality of the material world, and only the most outre scholars would dare suggest that objects have permanence. Objects there "grow vague or sketchy and lose detail" when they begin to be forgotten, culminating in their disappearance when they are completely forgotten. One year later, Tlönian objects begin to appear in the real world. Then a complete encyclopedia of the world turns up, transforming the human understanding of science and philosophy. As the author writes his postscript, the world is transforming entirely into Tlön."

[thirdity]

The metaphysicians of Tlön do not seek for truth or even for verisimilitude, but rather for the astounding. They judge that metaphysics is a branch of fantastic literature. They know that a system is nothing more than the subordination of all aspects of the universe to any one such aspect.

Jorge Luis Borges, "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius"

[mbharestuff]

In "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius," my favorite Borges story, an encyclopedia entry on a country that does not exist kickstarts a slow remolding of the very rules of reality until that formerly imaginary country--and the world it resided in--overwrites our own.

anyway I cannot WAIT to see Goncharov! 😌

[laughingpinecone]

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Tlön Uqbar Orbis Tertius - Jorge Luis Borges Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Additional Tags: Worldbuilding, POV First Person, Museums, Far Future, Recursive Hrönir, Reality Layers Like Mille-Feuille, the phoenix is like a little baby watch this, Surreal, cycles Summary:

A hrön of a hrön of a hrön and eight times more, found in the ur of an ur of an ur and so on and on until this idea at last scuttles off in an inferno of reason.

Yuletide treat for stickpenalties! Tackling Borges is always its own challenge, this was lots of fun to hammer into shape.

[stickpenalties]

this is how the goncharovposting makes me feel

[younes-ben-amara]

فلوبير للكاتب موباسان: “ليست الموهبة إلا صبرًا جميلًا! قُمْ للعمل!"

[jadedresearcher]

Although it seems anachronistic for Zampanio to be based entirely on House of Leaves, I believe it's likely that the two share significant amounts of DNA through having similar influences. The mutual focus on labyrinths is very reminiscent of Borges, especially in Ficciones, and I think that you can make an argument for Zampanio as a modern Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius.

Reading the wiki on the last one:

I really do think you're onto something. That entire idea, that being forgotten is deathdestruction shows up a lot in the various Zampanio branches I've seen.

Which is, you know, ironic, given how often the fandom before me seemed dedicated to making damn sure everything got forgotten.

[ladyvelkor]

aparently being a Borges fan also is like not a universal trait? and like noone I talk to about him ever knows who tf he is? like what. its Borges. my friend Borges. how do you not know Tlön Uqbar Orbis Tertius? Not even the library of Babel? like. its not just me that thinks it's weird for ppl to not be familiar right. like?

[k25ff]

“Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows.”

Foreach good. I encourage you to read it if you're a fan of Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius. (1573)

[haveyoureadthisfantasybook]

hii you asked for non english fantasy so id like to submit Cien años de soledad by Gabriel García Marquez and La casa de los espiritus by Isabel Allende. theyre magical realism but personally i think thats fantasy so idk. Cien años de soledad is definetly the more fantastic of the two though

hello! as I elaborated on way back in the day (on like day 2 of the blog, lmao), I do not generally consider magical realism to be fantasy as such. here’s what I said at the time:

———

> this will perhaps be a controversial stance, but as a rule I don’t consider magic(al) realism to be fantasy. a text like Alejo Carpentier’s El reino de este mundo / The Kingdom of This World — in conjunction with which Carpentier developed the idea of lo real maravilloso — is using apparently “fantastic” elements clearly within a “literary” and, ultimately, fundamentally realist framework: Carpentier’s contention, explored by later Boom writers, is that aspects of life in Latin America as experienced by Latin Americans cannot be adequately accounted for or expressed within the bounds of traditional European realism. [addition on 7/7/24: this is a fundamentally different theoretical and literary project than genre fantasy or even from gothic or gothic-adjacent texts.]

> this opens a much bigger can of worms re the social construction of “reality” in and by Western literary realism — Daniel Heath Justice, for example, has critiqued the reduction of work by Indigenous writers to the realm of “mere” allegory or simply to unreality. I’m not satisfied with Justice’s solution to the problem (the concept of “wonderworks”), because I think it cedes too much ground to Western literary realism’s claim to a monopoly on the real, but his underlying point stands. I have increasingly found that “magic(al) realism” is used, in popular contexts, less as a serious engagement with the theoretical problems that the authors of the Boom were grappling with and more as

a way to bracket off as “unreal” work by Indigenous, African, and other authors who are writing from within a different baseline realism than Western literary realism presupposes, without seriously engaging with the ways this work interrogates the hegemonic constructed “real” that Western states use to justify, for example, the destruction of Indigenous sacred sites for resource extraction purposes;

alternately, a kind of “fantasy lite” that wants to stay within the realm of “literary fiction” rather than risk being tarred with the genre label “fantasy”; or

a label for things that are simply fantasy, not engaged with any of the theoretical problems that define magic(al) realism as a genre, but are either liminal fantasy or more realism-adjacent than secondary-world fantasy or urban fantasy.

> things in categories 1 and 2 I would generally exclude from the category of fantasy (if you don’t want to be here, I don’t want you here either!); things in category 3 I would probably consider fantasy (and not consider magic(al) realism).

> my second and third questions / points about the gothic are also relevant here, and help clarify some fringe cases. Gabriel García Márquez and Alejo Carpentier were clearly working in the realm of literary fiction and not the “popular” literature that has come to be grouped under the label “fantasy”; conversely, Jorge Luis Borges was heavily influenced by anglophone pulp writers, including H.P. Lovecraft — I am comfortable identifying texts like “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius” as “fantasy” (for all that they predate the genre).

———

while some of Allende’s other work is more definitively fantasy (e.g., the Memorias del águila y del jaguar trilogy, which is currently queued), if La casa de los espíritus is less fantastic than Cien años de soledad I’m probably inclined to exclude it.

ALL OF THAT SAID: I admit to feeling a bit more ambivalent now, having since accepted Kafka’s Die Verwandlung / The Metamorphosis (as well as Haïlji’s The Republic of Užupis, which in some ways I think resembles the Boom writers’ magical realism). my four guiding questions for fringe cases between fantasy and realism are:

does the text contain an unequivocally fantastic element (something that, as Samuel Delany puts it, “could not happen” — some sign of magic or the supernatural)?

was the text composed as fantasy or as literary fiction?

for fiction published in the English-speaking world or other areas where there exists a separate fantasy market, is the text published and marketed as fantasy or as literary fiction?

if someone came to me and said they liked (e.g.) N.K. Jemisin, Patricia McKillip, and Charles de Lint, do I feel I could recommend this book to them and expect them to enjoy it on the basis of some similarity to these other authors?

my feeling is that most Boom magical realism is a maybe on question 1 (accounting for the fact that part of the point of the genre is to interrogate the social construction of “reality”) and a solid no on questions 2-4. but if you or anyone else wants to make a strong case for either Cien años de soledad or La casa de los espíritus, I am open to being convinced otherwise!

[bracketsoffear]

Harrow the Ninth (Tamsyn Muir) "Harrow the Ninth is, above all, really fucking confusing. Roughly every third chapter is actively gaslighting the reader about what happened in the last book. The main character is fucking struggling to maintain any sort of grip on reality all throughout the story, and more often than not, she fails miserably. This is due to several factors, including, but not limited to - sleep deprivation, latent schizophrenia, ruthless emotional manipulation from everyone around her, being full of a frankly alarming number of ghosts from several entirely unrelated sources, childhood parental and religious trauma, and a self-inflicted amateur lobotomy."

Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius (Jorge Luis Borges) "A short story concerning the author and his friend stumbling upon a mention of the Uqbar region in an encyclopedia, a place which is found in no other literature. One of the myths of Uqbar concerns Tlön, a fantastical place where people do not believe in the reality of the material world, and only the most outre scholars would dare suggest that objects have permanence. Objects there "grow vague or sketchy and lose detail" when they begin to be forgotten, culminating in their disappearance when they are completely forgotten. One year later, Tlönian objects begin to appear in the real world. Then a complete encyclopedia of the world turns up, transforming the human understanding of science and philosophy. As the author writes his postscript, the world is transforming entirely into Tlön."

[elbiotipo]

me encanta que le decimos "cuentos" a los cuentos de Borges, porque sí, técnicamente lo son, pero yo asocio la palabra cuento como a lo que le contás a los chicos antes de dormir

"ahora mi amor te voy a contar un cuento para que duermas, se llama Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius"

[grandhotelabyss]

In an old interview with Tyler Cowen, Knausgaard called Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius the greatest story ever written—a sentiment with which Cowen agreed. (Cowen seems to read everything, but there's something about an economist—an orthodox heterodox economist, no less!—making pronouncements on literature that makes me suspicious of the claim. Then again, he once wrote, "Shakespeare is very likely the deepest thinker the human race has produced." No argument there.)

Personally, I might bestow the honour on The Dead, but it's really more of a novella, and I'm admittedly quite the Deadhead. (To be clear, in the high arts a "Deadhead" is the moniker we attribute to readers obsessed with the poetic intensities of swift cessations: Death in Venice, The Death of Ivan Ilyich, the deaths of Sula, Septimus, Billy Budd, and Pierce Inverarity, etc. Indeed, poetic intensities and swift cessations may simply be the novella tout court. On the subject of jam bands—and cheese—I remain mysteriously silent.)

Might Joyce have authored the greatest story, the greatest novel, and the greatest love letters? (Forgive me, sweet Jane, for such futile superlatives against your soul-stirring pen. I am half agony, half cope.) I suppose Borges is more Beethovenian in his revolutionizing of the form, whereas Joyce aimed for a Bach-like perfection as it existed at the time.

Of course, one mustn't forget the dozen or so contenders from Poe, Kafka, and Chekhov, not to mention The Lottery and A Good Man is Hard to Find. What do you think? As always, thank you for your splendid insights! And to the anonymous hundreds reading this, or, at this point in my unsolicited soliloquy, the anonymous dozen skimming, please subscribe to John's serialized novel!

Thank you, David! Yes, I find Cowen dispiritingly, exhaustingly, demoralizingly well-read. Someone I admire on Substack recently gave a list of 10 pieces of advice for undergraduates, and I liked nine of them, but I didn't like the first: everything, he said, is interesting. But everything is not interesting. The undergraduate, the veritable ephebe, is right to be bored by some things. If I found everything interesting, who would I be? I almost cultivate my non-interests. With so many books I do want to read in the world, it's a relief to know there are also many books (books about economics, for example) that I do not want to read. Really, only obsessions matter. The personality, to be a personality, must have its limits, as must the work of art, even if as a novelist, I do aspire in my own way to the "everything and nothing" Borges imputed to Shakespeare, or to the Homeric as against the Virgilian in Mark Van Doren's line that Virgil is a style, Homer a world. Only Borges could be Homeric in a short story, though; for the rest of us—yes, even for Joyce—it takes a novel. A fellow Deadhead, I agree with you that that is a novella in the death-obsessed ranks of the great novellas. I add Heart of Darkness, The Metamorphosis, and Nella Larsen's Quicksand to your fine catalogue.

(Incidentally, when I was in college, a friend dragged me to see a jam band called The String Cheese Incident. They played a theater on the ground floor of Soldiers and Sailors Hall on the University of Pittsburgh campus, upstairs of which the great Gothic scene of Lecter's escape in Silence of the Lambs had been filmed a little less than a decade before. Jam bands don't do it for me; I was heavy bored at that concert, I have to tell you; Chesterton's neglected cheese be damned, poets have their right to silence on some subjects—because, again, everything is not interesting.)

Now to your question. When I think of great short stories, I do not, like George Saunders, think of 19th-century Russians. (19th-century Russians are better at length, when they go on and on and on—even, if you ask me, Chekhov, as I said earlier this year in praise of his novella, The Duel, a great novella not quite belonging to your catalogue inasmuch as it defeats death, more or less.) No, I think of 19th-century Americans. I think of "Ligeia" and "The Fall of the House of Usher" and "The Man of the Crowd," and I think of "Bartleby, the Scrivener" and "The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids" and "Benito Cereno," and I think of "The Author of Beltraffio" and "The Middle Years" and "The Figure in the Carpet." Above all, I think of Hawthorne, of "Young Goodman Brown" and "The Minister's Black Veil" and "Ethan Brand" and "Wakefield" and "The May-Pole of Merry Mount" and "The Artist of the Beautiful" and "The Birth-Mark" and (my favorite) "Rappaccini's Daughter." A great deal of Borges is already in those stories, these tales or parables or half-allegories—I do agree with both Knausgaard and Cowen that Borges's "Tlön," or maybe "The Aleph," must be the paradigm of the modern story—and a great deal of Kafka, Jackson, and O'Connor, too.

Honorable mention: I am not an expert on the 19th-century French, but "The Unknown Masterpiece" by Balzac is a new favorite, which I read for the first time just this year. A good tale in its own right, but to have anticipated, almost to the point of clairvoyance, the whole future course of art in one short story from the 1830s—!

Caveat: "Rappaccini's Daughter" has 3000 fewer words than The Dead; and "Benito Cereno" is double the length of "Rappaccini's Daughter." Why type some titles in italics and some in quotation marks? The distinction between novella and story must be qualitative rather than quantitative, with the distinction not quite only about death, since all three narratives at least include if they do not dwell upon swift cessations. "Rappaccini's Daughter" and "Benito Cereno" seem to me to be stories because they are about one thing, as opposed to The Dead, which, like The Scarlet Letter, is about several things—and as opposed, of course, to Moby-Dick and to Ulysses, which are, Aleph-wise, about absolutely everything ("[A]ny man unaccustomed to such sights, to have looked over her side that night, would have almost thought the whole round sea was one huge cheese, and those sharks the maggots in it"; "Cheese digests all but itself. Mity cheese"), and make everything as interesting as ever everything can be.

[revindicatedbyhistory]

ok here are my list of hypotesis for what is going on in house of leaves, from most to least likely

A: Zampanó isn´t real and is actually just johnny

this one is admittedly the most elegant and which requires less leaps of logic

B: Zampanó isn´t real and is actually pelafina, who wrote the text on the navidson record + johnny then tampered with it

this one is largely inspired because "johny finds text after zampanó dies in mysterious circumstances" and "johnny finds jewerlry after his mother dies" kind of parallel each other to me. and pelafina does seem like she could´ve written it

C: zampanó is real, whole story is a "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" thing

my least favorite because i don´t think you need to assume anything actually "supernatural" is going but i kind of like it because it would explain all the borges. also explains the contrary evidence appendix, of which i otherwise don´t know what to make of

[fashionlandscapeblog]

How could one do other than submit to Tlön, to the minute and vast evidence of an orderly planet? It is useless to answer that reality is also orderly. Perhaps it is, but in accordance with divine law - I translate: inhuman laws-which we never quite grasp. Tlön is surely a labyrinth, but it is a labyrinth devised by men, a labyrinth destined to be deciphered by men.

The contact and the habit of Tlön have disintegrated this world. Enchanted by its rigor, humanity forgets over and again that it is a rigor of chess masters, not of angels. Already the schools have been invaded by the (conjectural) "primitive language" of Tlön; already the teaching of its harmonious history (filled with moving episodes) has wiped out the one which governed in my childhood; already a fictitious past occupies in our memories the place of another, a past of which we know nothing with certainty-not even that it is false.

― Jorge Luis Borges, Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius, 1940