Comments on: Searching the Library of Babel

By: Alicia Long

Alicia Long — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 21:08:40 +0000

Mr. Grant,
The story that you quoted under #30 (Argentinean tales) as “Los objectos” is actually called “Los objetos” and the author is Silvina Ocampo (not Decampo). She was an Argentine author who was married to Bioy Casares.
The story can be found in the book “La furia y otros cuentos” (The fury and other stories).
I guess that it will be possible to find it online, but I didn’t searched. Good luck!
Alicia

By: Tercera Fundacion

Tercera Fundacion — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 08:59:28 +0000

Hello Mr. Grant.

Excuse my poor english.

Respect to the number 32 of this colecction, Libro de sueños http://www.tercerafundacion.net/biblioteca/ver/libro/10404, whe have all the storys but whithout links. You can see them at the end of “Texto de contracubierta”. The “F” means that is a fragment, “C” is it complete and into parentheses, the title of the complete piece or adicional information like if the original is a babilonic tale.

Génesis, Números, Jueces, Macabeos, Daniel, Ester, Reyes, Eclesiástico, Eclesiastés, Daniel, Hechos de los Apóstoles and San Mateo are books of the bible.

Un saludo.
Antonio Guisado. Team of librarians of the Tercera Fundación

By: Mattyboy

Mattyboy — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 20:13:40 +0000

Cool, thanks, I shall head to geocities…

By: Grant Munroe

Grant Munroe — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 16:00:31 +0000

Matty,

Totally valid gripe. Thankfully, his stories are also in HTML here:

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Oracle/7207/GilesTOC.htm

Just a heads up: it’s an old school geocities site; you need to jump around a bit. The stories are broken down by story number, not page number. The table of contents should help you find the ones that Borges chose. Hope that helps. Pu Songling’s pieces are weird and fun, really worth the trouble. “The Tiger of Chao-Ch’ëng” is a great place to start.

Quick update:

M.A. Orthofer at The Literary Saloon, when commenting on this article, pointed out that all the Gustav Meyrink stories selected by Borges will be included in the forthcoming The Dedalus Meyrink Reader (see their publicity page here). I missed that. Thanks, M.A. Orthofer.

Best,
Grant

By: Mattyboy

Mattyboy — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 14:44:24 +0000

Hey Grant,

Good stuff, thanks a million. But a question, neither here nor there: what the stink is Google doing digitizing books with scribbles and comments passim? Those Pu Songling stories are virtually unreadable. Just a question, and a gripe, I guess. But I dig the list and the effort, thanks again!

Matty

By: Miette

Miette — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 11:59:48 +0000

Cripe– I wanted to go to the beach with a zombie romance novel. Now I’ll be supine on the sand with these on a little electronic piece of dooky, like the jerk I probably am.

This is amazing.

Thanks a lot!
xo — Mtte.

By: Zak Smith

Zak Smith — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 20:51:48 +0000

rock.

By: Ilyse

Ilyse — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 01:50:42 +0000

THANK YOU.

By: John Madera

John Madera — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 20:24:12 +0000

Hi Grant,

I enjoyed your essay. An investigative search strikes me as an appropriate homage to Borges and his puzzles.

Thanks for giving me some more detours from my reading stack.