The Reader Lost in Tlön
or
The Profound and the Horrific in Borges
posted by mjd 
in Magic Realism, Writings | 6 Comments »
The Reader Lost in Tlön
6 Comments »
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I think with Borges there’s no fear of the riddle, while Lovecraft gets his panties in a twist over the great Lurking Murkiness. The riddle can be and stand alone. There’s no need for it to be solved or even explained. It can exist on its own as a thing of beauty and mystery.
There was an Argetinian comicbook called Perrasmus (?), which had a scene where the main character — it was a political thing — goes to a Borges lecture to receive a coded message. While Borges talks he taps the podium with his pen in morse code, giving the guy his secret message.
Incidentally, does anybody know how to reproduce the O with the two dots over it using html encoding, so that I can correctly reproduce the word Tlon?
I might suggest Castaneda’s last book, The Active Side of Infinity, as closer to the works of Borges and Lovecraft. Although it’s a better read if you have already finished his other books.
Couple suggestions: If you hold alt and type 148 it returns this: ö For HTML code you can type “ampersand number sign 246″ all as one block and it should appear: ö
It works! Score!
Thanks, Jeff.
You’re welcome glad I could help. Also, thank you for the essays about magic realism. I’ve found them to be quite insightful, and wish I had something intelligent to add or ask.
Only thought that came to mind, when you mentioned the 5 year rainstorm it made me think of the decade long winter in George Martin’s “Song of Ice and Fire” series and whether you’d consider that magic realism or not. I imagine it doesn’t quite reach the bar.
And I liked your definition about awe. It’s a very good point and something I think all writers should try to keep in mind.