Infinite Library

Simple book from the Infinite Library

Complex book from the Infinite Library

Library of Babel Wiki article on the short story by Jorge Borges

Library of Babel Online version of the library

In 1941 the Argentinian author, Jorge Borges, published the short story, The Library of Babel. In it we are told about an infinite library that contains every book that can ever be written. The books are all strings of letters (with other constraints) but just like your infinite monkeys on typewriters, Shakespeare will get written along with future histories and so on.

Jonathan Basile created an online experience of the book complete with a virtual architecture. The interesting spin he put on it was that instead of just searching the stacks for books at random, you could search for a specific word or sentence and his library would “find” the book that has that search term. It's pretty amazing and cool.

I took a different approach with mine as it strays pretty far from the original short story. My software creates a book using actual words and parts of sentences (nouns, verb, adjectives, etc) in patterns used in sentences ("noun, verb, noun", "article, adjective, noun, verb, article, noun", etc). This creates a work that follows regular syntax but without any semantic meaning. It kind of feels like there might be meaning.

My software also formats it using various randomly chosen features like chapters, epigraphs, dedication pages, title page, and so on. All of these features help reinforce the idea that you have before you an actual book and not just strings of letters.

You can either generate a book at random based on the dedication you choose or you can supply a title and the software will generate a book using that title. Either way, the software adds the words of the title into the tables of words making it more likely that those words get used which helps with the sensation that the book is “about” the title.