Babel

Michael Romano, Milton Läufer & all the contributors to BAR

Library of Babel as visualized by Erik Desmazieres.

(Each of the following sentences comes from the texts of the Review.
Hover over one to see its title or click to read the whole text.)

” Day’s essay settles an important point: it’s often said that Borges sanitized Faulkner’s text, when in fact, as Day points out, Borges was merely basing his translation on an already sanitized British edition of the novel published by Chatto and Windus in London. He would put a reference out that nobody in the Earth would know. This overcorrectness can be compared with the use of “École des Hautes Études” (mark of the feisty connoisseur) for “EHESS” (mainstream), or, too, the use of “Ulm” (the name of the street) for “ENS” (École Normale Superièure), intended to make it quite clear that they, having graduated from the university’s Latin Quarter branch, are not among the icky offspring of Lyon, Fontenay, or who-knows-where-else. They were not snake-dancers or tremblers. And so Yunior sets out to prove this thesis to us.