May 21, 2004

Borges as he was meant to be read

"The Book of Sand." A hypertext/puzzle, written by Jorge Luis Borges. Maximus Clarke writes, of the project:

Welcome! This web site contains, in eight randomly numbered pages, the text of Jorge Luis Borges' story "The Book of Sand" (as translated by Norman Thomas di Giovanni), with pictures and animations based on old engravings and photographs....

The Book of Sand site is a hypertext, with a nonlinear structure and dynamic images.... But the site is also a puzzle — because only you, the reader, can decide in what order to view the pages. Borges' original story provides an authoritative ordering of the text, but that authority has been removed from this version.

Postmodern critics are fond of saying that the reader imposes his or her own order upon the text; here at least this literary idea has been made a literal truth. But here there is also a chance to rediscover the original unity intended by the author....

In closing, it is strange how many of Borges' stories seem like prophetic references to the dense, mazelike, abstract universe of the World Wide Web.

(Via Plep).