Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
A wonderful marriage of storytelling and visual art, July 13, 2001
"The Library of Babel" is one of the most memorable stories by the
great Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges. This slim book contains
Andrew Hurley's English translation of the story, eleven illustrations
by Erik Desmazieres, and an introduction by Angela Giral."Library"
is the quintessential "Borgesian" tale. The story concerns an infinite
library, composed of endlessly connected hexagonal galleries, and
populated by inhabitants among whom have risen various weird belief
systems and subcultures. The first-person narrator is one of the
library's residents. "Library" is a masterpiece of the fantastic and
the metaphysical. Giral notes in her introduction that
Desmaziere's engravings are not literal representations of scenes from
the story, but rather "the product of a parallel imagination, inspired
to create in visual images his own, equivalent universe." The etchings
have an elegant, majestic, and sometimes whimsical quality that
effectively complements Borges' unique imagination. This book would
make a nice gift for lovers of Borges, or of fantastic literature in
general.
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
Beautiful Book...But Thin Value, May 20, 2007
Let me start of by saying that the artwork of Erik Desmazieres in this
nicely designed little hardcover is fantastic! His images captured the
essence of what a library containing all of the knowledge of mankind
would be - I wanted to be there perusing the shelves, absorbing the
information.
But in the end, this an attractive, well designed hardcover of a
short story, so I question its value to anyone but the collector of
Borges' work. With this book, I am new to reading Borges, and I plan to
read more of his work; and if I had encountered this story in his
collection of short stories, I would have smiled at the end and thought
"interesting filler story". But, I didn't read it in the collection, I
read it in this beautiful book and thus feel that it didn't rate its
own standalone volume.
Yes, the story is creative; but maybe I am dense or something as I
didn't find it all that profound. I did pick up a few metaphors I could
relate to, but, from the forward, I was really expecting some kind of
mind blowing, thought-expanding experience; but, in the end, it turned
out to be a quick read before bed of a book I won't keep.
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
A gem of modern publishing, April 21, 2001
Bibliophiles will be drawn to this wonderful little volume combining
fine writing, fascinating artists engravings and top quality book production. Borges' meditation on the library of Babel - an infinite
universe of hexagonal galleries containing every possible book -
provides a metaphor for thinking about knowledge and truth. While only
a few thousand words long, Borges' story draws the reader into a world
both deeply familiar and utterly surreal. His descriptions of how
people have searched for the ultimate truth, to be found (they imagine)
in a volume somewhere on the endless library shelves, makes for an
unsettling parable.Print
maker Eric Desmazieres provides eleven engravings, offering intricately
detailed architectural drawings of the library - a monstrous, looming
tower of Babel; huge internal chambers with book-shelves reaching into
the darkness; urgent, scurrying librarians pushing books in barrows
across narrow bridges, meticulously arranging volumes on shelves. The
moody darkened images perfectly compliment Borges' prose. The
publisher, David R Godine, from Boston specialises in fine quality
editions. The book itself is a wonderful example of the publisher's
art. It too will have a well-deserved place in Borges' Library of
Babel.
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