The Book of Sand
Peeking into the mind of Jorge Luis Borges
The Book of Sand is a short story by Jorge Luis Borges, it describes a mythical infinite book. It is called The Book of Sand “because neither the book nor sand
possess a beginning or an end.” Each page is different from the last, and it is impossible to turn back to a page already seen. I encourage you to read the two-page story first to avoid any spoilers. (download story here, or watch a brilliant short film based on the book here)
The protagonist is quickly absorbed by the book, cataloging the illustrations and recording as much information as he could. And after spending months devoted to the book he realizes he is dealing with something truly monstrous. He contemplates destroying it in a fire, and recoils because burning an infinite book would produce enough smoke to suffocate the world. In the end he hides the book in library, because “the best place to hide a leaf is in a forest.”
With brazen conviction I have created my own copy of the book of sands, which pulls pages at random from the Project Gutenberg archives. It gets pages of all languages from various eras (c.1800s). It really recreates the experience of the protagonist, and gives us a peek into the surreal imagination of Borges. Y̶o̶u̶ ̶c̶a̶n̶ ̶g̶e̶t̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶r̶ ̶o̶w̶n̶ ̶c̶o̶p̶y̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶b̶o̶o̶k̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶s̶a̶n̶d̶s̶ ̶h̶e̶r̶e̶.̶ ̶(̶D̶o̶w̶n̶l̶o̶a̶d̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶z̶i̶p̶,̶ ̶e̶x̶t̶r̶a̶c̶t̶,̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶r̶u̶n̶ ̶-̶ ̶n̶o̶t̶e̶ ̶t̶h̶i̶s̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶a̶ ̶w̶o̶r̶k̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶p̶r̶o̶g̶r̶e̶s̶s̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶r̶ ̶i̶n̶p̶u̶t̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶w̶e̶l̶c̶o̶m̶e̶d̶,̶ ̶i̶t̶ ̶o̶n̶l̶y̶ ̶r̶u̶n̶s̶ ̶o̶n̶ ̶w̶i̶n̶d̶o̶w̶s̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶n̶o̶w̶)̶ (The code is broken because project gutenberg has changed it’s website layout, I’ll need to add a new scraper — coming soon) The Processing source can be found on GitHub.
A few screenshots from of the Book Of Sand:
