The Book of Sand

Jorge Luis Borges’ The Book of Sand contains several of the themes Borges experimented with in his works throughout his life such as magical realism and the illusion of reality in fiction, obsession and the overwhelming nature of the infinite. The Book of Sand is so brief—it’s less of a short story and more of a photograph: a singular glimpse inward, a revealing sliver, a narrative to which we have only one frame’s worth of access.

The Book of Sand would seem to offer the apex of some such narrative as opposed to just any mysterious moment pulled from an endless miscellany; how many people ever come across anything as “diabolical” and heart-stopping as a book with infinite pages, let alone get the chance to pocket it? The action is abrupt, less an arc than a spike; over the course of four pages our protagonist (perhaps even a fictionalized Borges) encounters a peddler, buys a book procured in India, discovers the book’s horrifying properties, decides to dispose of it, and eventually does so by hiding it a library—because, after all “the best place to hide a leaf is in the forest.”

The story acknowledges its obsession with the infinite immediately; the first thing the narrator does is begin recapitulating a version of Zeno’s paradox:

The turn in this first paragraph is from the articulation of an abstruse mathematical and philosophical problem to an assertion—namely, that the story about to be delivered should be believed despite its seemingly dubious nature. To decide that proceeding “more geometrico”—in the manner of geometry—is not the right way to begin, but nonetheless leaving this to begin the story, is an odd move, isn’t it? It’s tricky: the ellipsis (…) invites the reader to think of the speaker’s voice as trailing off, in hesitation or perplexity. The series of fragments that precede this shift are confusing and mysterious enough; abstractly-construed spaces are, in the speaker’s words, like Russian nesting dolls. It is a very fitting beginning for a story that defies Euclidean geometry, not to mention sanity.

The Book of Sand is a novel about the infinite as depicted in the description of the uncountability of the grains of sand in the world. The Book of Sand is the central symbol of the book, and a mysterious one. Having no beginning or end, and written in a language the narrator cannot understand, the book is framed as fascinating and diabolical. It has no obvious reason for its value: it’s an unreadable book. But it clearly has some mystical power, which leads the book seller and the narrator to both view it as highly valuable. The story leads us to question what makes people consider something valuable. The Book of Sand is compared to Bibles, which also brings to mind the question of how people treat a copy of the Bible as valuable or not. The topic of reverence is also touched upon in this way. The bible is the most printed book in the world, and many groups exist to distribute Bibles as a technique to proselytize. But many individuals have deep connections to their specific copies of the Bible, or to family Bibles passed down through generations. We can also think of how many people rarely or never read the Bible but might still have a copy they treasure or have an identity tied up with Christianity and the Bible.

Things to Note

Theme: Be careful what you wish for. Infinity is terrifying.

Setting: Buenos Aires

Symbol: The Book of Sand (Infinity)

Elements: Metaphors, Imagery, Symbolism, Foreshadowing, Allegory

Characters: The Narrator, The Salesman,

Plot: A man buys a mysterious book and is consumed by obsession. He decides to hide it in a library.

Please consider and answer the following questions after reading the short stories. (Minimum 200 words)

The Price

1) Is there an entity which sacrifices for you? Do you think there are beings whose entire existence is sacrifice? Is there anything you would take this charge for? Is there anything you consider worthy fighting demons for?

The Book of Sand

2) Much like an unstoppable force meeting an immovable object, when the finite is confronted with the concept of the infinite, it results in catastrophic change. As the internet grows exponentially larger, do you think that it will begin to resemble the infinite nature of the Book of Sand? Is that a bad thing?

Respond to two of your classmates posts by Monday Night.