Book of Sand

 When I was a young man (starting college or perhaps even still in high school),  I wrote a short story - inspired perhaps by my love of encyclopedic things, of learning of the Herculean undertaking of who Denis Diderot, an Enlightenment polymath who single-handedly put forth an Encyclopedia, and no doubt also influenced by the pre-eminence of the scriptorium The Name of the Rose in which a man, perhaps a young man, but I imagined him as old, sets about to perfect a Yahrbuch or almanac, a chronicle of a particular year. (1145 a.d. I believe - chosen perhaps because I could think of nothing of note happening in that year). He is located in a remote and obscure monastery and purports to perfect this chronicle for the Emperor, as a gift. The story focused on the trapping of scholarship in the medieval period, notably, the difficulty in getting paper and the use of particular tools, inks, brushes, etc.  Pumice stone, used to scrap the vellum clean, etc. I did not go into the ...

The image contains a poem and a piece of prose in Spanish, alongside an illustration of an elephant with people riding on it. Published in Around the day in eighty worlds . Here is a summary and translation of the text: Poem (Left Side) Title: "The smiler with the knife under the cloak" Original Spanish Text:   Justo en mitad de la ensaimada  se plantó y dijo: Babilonia.  Muy pocos entendieron que quería decir el Río de la Plata.  Cuando se dieron cuenta ya era tarde,  quién ataja a ese potro que galopa  de Patmos a Gotinga a media rienda.  Se empezó a hablar de vikingos  en el café Tortoni,  y eso curó a unos cuantos de Juan Pedro Calou  y enfermó a los más flojos de runa y David Hume.   A todo esto él leía  novelas policiales. Translation:   Right in the middle of the spiral[?] he stood and said: Babylon.  Very few understood that he meant the River Plate.  By the time they realized it was too late,  who ...