Monday, March 15, 2004
(8:17 AM) | Adam Kotsko:
UWC: "The Library of Babel"
This is just an open thread for now -- I might update with a more substantial post after the discussion gets going. For instructions on trackback, see the previous discussion.
UPDATE: Okay, the response has been pretty lackluster so far -- maybe some substantive content here will help.
I know the most obvious feature of the story is the fascinating idea of the unimaginable number of permutations of texts, the collection of seemingly all possible vessels for meaning -- but there is something outside the text in this case. First, there is the sheer arbitrarity of the books themselves. No book could have 410 pages, I don't think, since I'm pretty sure all books have to have a number of leaves divisible by four. And when exactly did the alphabet start having twenty-two letters? The Spanish alphabet has even more letters than the English alphabet. Why no punctuation other than a period or a comma? Do people in the world of the library of Babel never ask questions? Do they never exclaim?
Moving outside of the books' format, what about the perfectly arbitrary hexagonal rooms? What about the limited number of shelves? What about the librarians themselves? Where did they come from? What blinded them to the finitude of the library? Why the hopelessness at the prospect that everything had already been written? After all, it would be a simple matter to know, absolutely for certain, that you had produced a text that doesn't exist in the library -- just make it 411 pages long, or introduce a new punctuation mark. There's a whole world of possibilities that the library itself just can't touch, on its own terms.
If only the librarians had thought to introduce a couple well-placed question marks.
