Disciplines of Geography

Another Borges piece with an attractive premise. Not in Labyrinths but just a short-short ?parable?

On Exactitude in Science . . . In that Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the map of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of the Empire, the entirety of a Province. In time, those Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied, and the Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and which coincided point for point with it. The following Generations, who were not so fond of the Study of Cartography as their Forebears had been, saw that that vast Map was Useless, and not without some Pitilessness was it, that they delivered it up to the Inclemencies of Sun and Winters. In the Deserts of the West, still today, there are Tattered Ruins of that Map, inhabited by Animals and Beggars; in all the Land there is no other Relic of the Disciplines of Geography.

Suarez Miranda,Viajes de varones prudentes, Libro IV,Cap. XLV, Lerida, 1658

From Jorge Luis Borges, Collected Fictions, Translated by Andrew Hurley Copyright Penguin 1999 .

Reminds me, somehow, of Kafka's aphorism....

Leopards in the Temple

Leopards break into the temple and drink to the dregs the wine in the sacrificial pitchers; this is repeated over and over again; finally it can be calculated in advance, and it becomes a part of the ceremony.

U of Iowa Creative Non-Fiction

So the Creative Non-fiction Writing Seminar out of the University of Iowa my Brother Brooke is doing....
Here is the website, it's under the International Writing Program.
Here is the website  

I am attaching the syllabus but the readings are posted to a class website to which I don't have access. If there are readings you are interested in I can see if I can get a hold of them. Oops, doesn't look like Blogger lets one attach files.  Facebook did, maybe the Facebook group will be better.  Hmmm

All Things Quixote

Attention today to all things Don Quixote:
And to books: "In a word, Don Quijote so buried himself in his books that he read all night from sundown to dawn, and all day from sunup to dusk until with virtually no sleep and so much reading he dried out his brain and lost his sanity."

Beginning with Borges:
"Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote," "Parable of Cervantes and the Quixote," and ("Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius," "The Garden of the Forking Path," "The Lottery in Babylon," "The Circular Ruins," "The Library of Babel," "Borges and I") ⎯the question of books, real or lost, or imaginary present in most....

Continuing with DON QUIXOTE, the book. By Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
Translations? Looks like the recent, acclaimed as readable (perhaps to a fault) is by Edith Grossman, 2005. The Norton Critical uses the 1995 Burton Raffel. Those seeking a more archaic feel choose the 1885 John Ormsby —out of copyright so often free(updated in 1981 for an earlier Norton Critical—not free). Also mentioned, the 1957 Walter Starkie. You can read the first line in each here:  

Other Mentions:
THE 351 BOOKS OF IRMA ARCURI by David Bajo
One modern-day male's search for his book-binding Dulcinea. Two of the 351 books bound by Irma are DON QUIXOTE and FICCIONES and both play a part in the mystery. What Irma does when binding FICCIONES is not unlike the beginning of "Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius." And the descriptions of bindings.... "Don Quixote. It was the fattest book in the entire collection, bound in dimpled pigskin, dyed the color of topaz." Enticing.
The Amazon Reviews of this book are not overwhelmingly positive, a lot of people really hated it, soooo read them and decide if the book is worth reading.

Other Possibilites:
I didn't think of it but there is Kathy Acker's DON QUIXOTE, WHICH WAS A DREAM. This is not the Acker on Lance's list, but it fits our theme. Acker's Quixote is female. Following up on this book, I found this essay: which claims that Borges "Pierre Menard" is the precursor to the Acker. The essay also mentions THE FEMALE QUIXOTE by Charlotte Ramsey written in 1752. Hmm, wonder what that one's about? Ha, you can download it for free on ibooks, if you download two volumes. The kindle version is being "fixed" at the moment.

Well all this is enough for now.