The Book of Imaginary Beings by Jorge Luis Borges, and The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco, a natural pairing since Eco’s book is full of allusions to Borges. There’s a lovely set of illustrations of Borges’ beings here. Rereading these books for the first time in a decade or so, I wondered whether the idea of Borges’ Library of Babel as a metaphor for the Internet had occurred to anyone else. According to Google, the answer is “Only about 10,000 times”.

I’ve also been watching the new adaptation of Sons and Lovers. It will be interesting to see if this does anything for Lawrence’s reputation, which has declined precipitously in recent years under the combined impact of feminist criticism and the declining appeal of the Romantic ideal of the artist whose transcendent genius excuses his atrocious behavior and whose atrocious behavior is evidence of his transcendent genius. Picasso is the archetypal 20th century example, but in his case perhaps the genius is great enough to excuse the behavior.