Alex Wright

Cataloging the venerable Jorge

May 17, 2005

The Crimson Hexagon is an annotated bibliography of all the fictional book titles that crop up in the works of Jorge Luis Borges. Appropriately, author Allen B. Ruchs has added his own made-up annotations to this exercise in fictional bibliography (or is that bibliographical fiction?)

The fiction of Borges is filled with references to encyclopedias that do not exist, reviews of imaginary books by fictional authors, and citations from monographs that have as much real existence as does the Necronomicon or the Books of Bokonon. As an intellectual exercise of pure whimsical uselessness, I have catalogued here all these "imaginary" books that I could find in the stories of the "real" Argentine. I am sure that Borges himself would fail to see much of a difference. . . . On a related note, artist George Kranitis commissioned himself to design a collection of fictional Borges book covers.

(via ed)

File under: Books

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