Tar for Mortar: The Library of Babel and the Dream of Totality

by Jonathan Basile

TAR FOR MORTAR offers an in-depth exploration of one of literature’s greatest tricksters, Jorge Luis Borges. His short story “The Library of Babel” is a signature examplar of this playfulness, though not merely for the inverted world it imagines, where a library thought to contain all possible permutations of all letters and words and books is plumbed by pious librarians looking for divinely pre-fabricated truths. One must grapple as well with the irony of Borges’s narration, which undermines at every turn its narrator’s claims of the library’s universality, including the very possibility of exhausting meaning through combinatory processing.

Borges directed readers to his non-fiction to discover the true author of the idea of the universal library. But his supposedly historical essays are notoriously riddled with false references and self-contradictions. Whether in truth or in fiction, Borges never reaches a stable conclusion about the atomic premises of the universal library — is it possible to find a character set capable of expressing all possible meaning, or do these letters, like his stories and essays, divide from themselves in a restless incompletion?

While many readers of Borges see him as presaging our digital technologies, they often give too much credit to our inventions in doing so. Those who elide the necessary incompletion of the Library of Babel compare it to the Internet on the assumption that both are total archives of all possible thought and expression. Though Borges’s imaginings lend themselves to digital creativity (libraryofbabel.info is certainly evidence of this), they do so by showing the necessary incompleteness of every totalizing project, no matter how technologically refined. Ultimately, Basile nudges readers toward the idea that a fictional/imaginary exposition can hold a certain power over technology.

Genres: Literature, Philosophy, Nonfiction

106 pages, Paperback

Published March 13, 2018

Reviews

[Nicolas Stagliano · Rating 5 out of 5]

In Tar for Mortar, Basile details the premise of the Library of Babel and controversies regarding its interpretation. He also outlines the fundamentals of Atomist philosophy, elements of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, and whether or not it can be properly argued that Borges "invented" the internet.

Ultimately, I ended up feeling somewhat lost as I was reading this; the entire time, I was asking myself, "what is this really about?" It details so many things, but doesn't really have an over-arching thesis. I did read the Library of Babel before reading this, but I couldn't help but feel that Borges' Labyrinths was a necessary prerequisite for fully comprehending Tar for Mortar; he references Borges' other works quite extensively, but doesn't give full quotes of the citations, which leaves the uninformed reader wondering what they are missing out on.

Summarily, it was a pleasant read. Basile is very tight with his prose, and if you miss one sentence you might not understand an entire paragraph (Nietzsche and Kant are the same way, if you ever try to read them, beware). I finished the book longing for more; I look forward to reading Basile's next work, if he is to publish another book.

I just checked Borges' Labyrinths out from my library, and I will be reading that. I reckon, because of Basile's work, I'll have a lot of thoughts on the topic by the time I'm finished with it.

[Per · Rating 4 out of 5]

https://jonathanbasile.com/
https://archive.org/details/9839926e-...

Given its character set and dimensions, https://libraryofbabel.info/ contains 29^3,200 unique pages, or about 10^4,677 [books]. In comparison, the universe contains only 10^80 atoms. It would require many universes of hard drives to store all its pages on disk. This raises some necessary questions about the possibility or actuality of its existence. In considering the algorithm used to circumvent this impossibility, our focus will be on raising the question of the virtual archive and how it complicates our notion of presence and absence.

From the website About page:

The Library of Babel is a place for scholars to do research, for artists and writers to seek inspiration, for anyone with curiosity or a sense of humor to reflect on the weirdness of existence - in short, it’s just like any other library. If completed, it would contain every possible combination of 1,312,000 characters, including lower case letters, space, comma, and period. Thus, it would contain every book that ever has been written, and every book that ever could be - including every play, every song, every scientific paper, every legal decision, every constitution, every piece of scripture, and so on. At present it contains all possible pages of 3200 characters, about 10^4,677 books.

[b · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another nice title from punctum. Definitely a niche offering, for those of you who like the website, and those who wanna read a really well developed consideration of Nietzche and permutability etcetera. A little long for a treatise on one’s own work, but clearly written (if not brickdense in too-long sections, a bit of breathing room could always be nice). “Computational art” and the ideas of ownership and creativity and originality are perhaps better tackled by other thinkers, but Basile’s enthusiasm and groundwork make for a bearable read of an odd experiment and odder deep-dive into its nature.

[Matt Heavner · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very academic, very philosophical, very fun (very very?) look at Borges, with a touch "crowd source" / open source, read. I enjoyed it, but it varied from insightful, to meta, to too philosophical. References ranged from Kafka, Nietzsche, Kant, and way more. The discussion and authors are based on Borges, many translations, and the libraryofbabel.info web site. If you enjoy Umberto Ecco (and/or have a degree in philosophy), you'll love this. If you'd rather keep it at a Dan Brown level this will be more than you want.

[Julien · Rating 4 out of 5]

The original idea of a library who contains every text that was and that ever will be written is mind bending.

It is a rather good book in analyzing the totality and originalty of the library of bable. It has interesting references to ideas of Nietzsche and of other famous philosophers.

"It is the ineluctable incompleteness of our knowledge that makes something like novelty possible"

[Yadid · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just amazing critical look into the whole Tower of Babel concept. Not for the easy-reader, but if you're willing to just put in some time and just try to read and think, you will absolutely love this.