Imagine an infinite library, one with a never ending bookshelf and an innumerable amount of books. These books all contain the same number of pages and use the same letters, periods, spaces, commas, etc. Infinite books means infinite stories, everything that can be written; all books past, present, and future exist within this library.

After I read “The Library of Babel” by Jorge Luis Borges, I was surprised to learn it was published in 1941, overshadowed in its own collection by the titular “Garden of Forking Paths”. The short story forgoes a traditional protagonist in favor of a narrator, a Librarian, who retails the reader with a short history of his universe, The Library.

The Infinite Library:

Borges’ Library is much the same as I’ve described it: infinite, and containing every tome imaginable. This includes books containing nothing but repetitions of three letters and books containing accurate accounts of our father’s childhood. The narrator describes how generations of scholars have researched the library, searched its halls for prophetic books that tell the future, or lost texts long forgotten. So many people have entered The Library that cultures have developed around especially promising bookshelves. New languages emerge from the hermits who’ve lived in The Library longer than outside it.

The narrator reveals three distinct arcs in humanity’s relationship with The Library: joy, despair, and hope.

“When it was announced that the Library contained all books, the first reaction was unbounded joy,” (Borges, Hurley). Humanity was delighted in the knowledge that the answers to every question existed somewhere within the library; all they needed to do is look. Expeditions were undertaken to scour The Library for cures to disease, solutions to poverty, and the elusive Vindications: “-books of apologiæ and prophecies that would vindicate for all time the actions of every person in the universe and that held wondrous arcana for men’s futures.” It was a golden age for discovery, but it wasn’t to last.

As humanity delves deeper, the thrill of initial discovery fades. Factions begin to form around philosophies of thought while the original reasons for coming to The Library become obscured. Once confronted with infinite possibilities, some decide to discard the texts filled with gibberish, while others pour through their randomized pages in search of a pattern. What tethers these groups is an overwhelming sense of despair. The knowledge they sought was forever out of reach, and even if they were to obtain whatever it was they searched for, there would be another book, a perfect contradiction and dissertation of the first that renders it obsolete.

As our narrator nears the present, he reflects on the current state of humanity: “I know districts in which the young people prostrate themselves before books and like savages kiss their pages, though they cannot read a letter.” He talks of brigandry in the upper levels and epidemics that ravage populations. Despite all this, the narrator indulges in a bit of hope with his last few lines. While The Library may be infinite, the number of 410 page books is not; if this is the case, then The Library must be unlimited but periodic, repeating its shelves every so often. “If an eternal traveler should journey in any direction, he would find after untold centuries that the same volumes are repeated in the same disorder-which, repeated, becomes order: the Order.”

Stages of Grief:

Aspiring authors will inevitably reckon with the realization that everything they write has been done before and better.

When I started my creative writing education, I was excited to join a cohort of capable writers under the tutelage of experienced professors. I loved writing and I felt at home in my workshops. Weekly readings and writings taught me more about the craft than I’d learned by myself in years. Most of all, I felt I had the world at my fingertips; there were endless opportunities in every draft. Early on, I truly thought my every story was wholly unique in content and construction, but the thing about learning is that we never stop.

The summer between my second and third Master’s semester was one of the most difficult in my education. I was burnt out. Writer’s block was common and I needed to write over a hundred pages for my thesis in order to graduate. I had ideas, but none of them were good enough. I’d recently been introduced to my betters: Dennis Johnson, Colin Barret, Stephen Graham Jones; their stories enchanted me, inspired me, and filled me with despair. How could I write something that compared to theirs? How could I compare with any established author, for that matter? I pursued the content that interested me and wrote in ways that I hoped would attract similar writers, but were all my works just poor imitations of existing masterpieces?

It’s hard for me to look back at the past from the present without cringing, but I think that’s a sign of growth. Eventually, I settled into my process, consulted with my professors. It was a common problem for adolescent writers; we grow up with limitless media and crave a departure from the norm. So many collegiate creatives try experimenting with odd perspectives and tricks of craft precisely because they’ve read the mainstream and reject it. With that in mind, all but the most out-there stories have been attempted. Even so, we all still have something: the process.

If our goal is originality, look no further than our own personal writing process. Authors need not avoid themes and imagery they enjoy for the sake of appearing original because content alone does not account for the sum total of a story. If that were the case, originality would’ve died out long ago. The differentiating factor is in how we tell a story, not what the story is about.

I wonder if Borges overcame a similar problem. While his ideas were novel at the time, the modernist style he embodied was succeeded by postmodernism, and themes of infinity are now somewhat commonplace. His work survives because of his authorship, not originality.

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