Borge's Tolon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius: Why can't it be real?

There is no easy way to read a story about a fictional place. This is my second time reading this story for class and even now, I find myself re-reading parts of the story to make sense. One thing about this story is that now matter how hard you try to fight the urge to make the imaginary worlds of Tlon and Uqbar real, they are, in the end, fake. That is hardest part about reading this story. I know, most of the things we read are fiction. But the narrator in this story is so involved in discovering the worlds that the reads are also pulled into believing the places are real.

One thing I didn’t like about the story was the structure the first few pages of the story took. Honestly, when I first started reading the story I was pretty bored. Had I not read the story before, I might not have finished it. But I stuck it out hoping to have a different experience than my previous. There is a lot of encyclopedia language in the first few paragraphs that bogs my reading experience down. I feel like I’m thrown into the middle of an on going story and I’m missing some vital information that I never have fully revealed once I finish the story.
Once I get through the first part of the story, I’m immediately swept into Borges’ attempt to create a story within a story. One fallacy I see when writing like this is the relationship developed between the narrator and reader. Once we start seeing that fictional world appear in the different encyclopedias, it established a trust relationship with the reader – that same trust I began to feel in hopes that Tlon was real.

I wonder if other readers/writers who read this particular story felt betrayed, or for a lesser word, let down that the land of Tlon wasn’t real.This story has challenged me to attempt to create my own planet/fictional world within a story. Some of the other stories that come to mind like this are Star Wars and other fantasy driven story lines. I think what distinguished those stories from Borges’ story, is that Borges’ story doesn’t develop any characters or conflict. Borge’s conflict is developed once the narrator finds some ‘holes’ in his search for Tlon’s existence.

I would have liked to see Tlon come full force with characters and other conflicts, but I guess it’s best that the story didn’t take that turn. Instead it leaves me wondering what exactly is real and what isn’t. A pretty good way to leave the reader hungry for more