"Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" by Jorge Luis Borges

I have to say that “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius” is easily the weirdest short story I’ve ever read. When I finished it, I concluded that the idea of writing about a secret society creating a fictitious encyclopedia about a made-up planet, complete with a made-up language and made-up ways of thinking, was very compelling, but I simply did not enjoy Borges’ execution.

I found the story hard to read, often times uninteresting because of the sheer mountain of made-up facts, and was bothered by the descriptions of Tlön’s laws and customs. Things like the argument about the nine coins story I just found nonsensical.

The strangest thing about the story was the fact that I didn’t feel like I was reading a short story. Several times I asked myself whether this was the right handout or if I had mistakenly started reading the assignment for my nonfiction class. The challenge of reading about of a work of fiction as the subject of a short fiction piece was very demanding.

This might also have to do with the narrator’s extremely dense voice. There is an endless number of facts and references to things that aren’t real, not even in the world of the story, yet the narrator seems to assume that the reader is familiar with them. I never felt a personal connection to anything the narrator said. I have to say that the story left me cold, with the exception of the very beginning, when he brings up the saying Bioy claimed to have read. I found that part amusing.

At the beginning, I was hoping for some sort of tense story about a mysterious book. I was reminded of the movie The Ninth Gate by Roman Polanski. But the further I read, the more abstract the story became, and the more I lost interest.

I have a strong feeling that everything Borges tried to say with his story went completely over my head. This seems to be confirmed by the enormous length of the Wikipedia article devoted to the story. Maybe if I read up on it, the brilliance of the story will become self-evident. But for now, it’s lost on me.