Robert Smithson, “A Tour of the Monuments of Passaic, New Jersey 1967,” Ruins, Ed. Brian Dillon (MIT Press / Whitechapel Gallery, 2011)
That zero panorama seemed to contain ruins in reverse, that is — all the new construction that would eventually be built. This is the opposite of the “romantic ruin” because the buildings don’t fall into ruin after they are built but rather rise into ruin before they are built.
Darran Anderson, “The Graveyard of Abandoned Projects,” Darran Anderson, 13 May 2012.
Most people have unfulfilled dreams, ambitions, fantasies, plots of revenge, schemes of emotional or industrial sabotage, secret desires to drive at high speed through deserted post-apocalyptic cities or go on killing sprees through their workplace or merely send the earth hurtling into the sun. Such is life.
Writers have these too. Even failed or failing ones. Especially failed or failing ones. Rather than actually do the things in question, the writer choses a metaphysical shortcut of the most profoundest inanity; to write them down. […]
Falling in love with someone must occur twice: the first time as contingency; the second as destiny. By then, of course, it is usually too late.
An article of mine, entitled “La influencia de la ansiedad” (“The Influence of Anxiety”), appears in the second issue of Revista Multidisciplinar de Función Lenguaje, a free journal published by Función Lenguaje, Madrid’s applied literature centre (centro de literatura aplicade de Madrid).
Jorge Luis Borges, “The Library of Babel,” Fictions, 1944
I repeat: in order for a book to exist, it is sufficient that it be possible.
Gottfried Leibniz
Everything that is possible demands to exist.
Jorge Luis Borges, “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius,” Fictions, 1944
A book that does not contain its counterbook is considered incomplete.
Jorge Luis Borges, “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote,” Fictions, 1944
I have reflected that it is legitimate to see the “final” Quixote as a kind of palimpsest, in which the traces — faint but not undecipherable — of our friend’s “previous” texts must shine through. Unfortunately, only a second Pierre Menard, reversing the labours of the first, would be able to exhume and revive those Troys…
Jorge Luis Borges, “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote,” Fictions, 1944
My general recollection of the Quixote, simplified by forgetfulness and indifference, might well be the equivalent of the vague foreshadowing of a yet unwritten book.
Jorge Luis Borges, Foreword, Fictions, 1944
It is a laborious madness and an impoverishing one, the madness of composing vast books — serring out in five hundred pages an idea that can be perfectly related orally in five minutes. The better way to go about it is to pretend that those books already exist, and offer a summary, a commentary on them. That was Carlyle’s procedure in Sartor Resartus, Butler’s in The Fair Haven — though these works suffer under the imperfection that they themselves are books, and not a whit less tautological than the others. A more reasonable, more inept, and more lazy man, I have chosen to write notes on imaginary books.
valentinvermot follows emiliepierrade
ANDREW GALLIX 