/ssrg/ Short Story Reading Group: The Lottery in Babylon

Read Library of Babel, a much better short story

Thanks cause I liked how this was written but I didn't find the material all that great. Never read Borges before

I think Borges gave it all away towards the end, when the Company was compared to a god. After that, it was easy to see the parallels to the development of religion, right through to the contemporary perspectives on the company offered at the end.

I didn't get that at all, my nigger.

Neither did I

I usually judge if people liked it based on the responses in the thread.

Having a poll for the next story each time is going to be a lot of polls. I may do so in the future, but right now I have a good list of stories I'll just go through.

Indeed, the Company is god, or the random chance in all our lives. Who lives today, and who dies? Who becomes wealthy, and who poor? Who has joy, and who suffers?

Fortuna's wheel spins for kings and peasants alike.

Was Borges gay?

Fuck off Ignatius

...

I really liked the story, but I don't know what to say about it. Perhaps what I found most fascinating is the constant feeling one gets that there is something wrong in the background, not a thing you can describe, but something unnerving, out of place. Borges is particularly good at creating this feeling with his stories. Would it be the quick mention of a slave getting his tongue burned, or just dropping the name Baal only to never refer to it again.

I like the interpretation that someone else made where they compare the Company to God and the development of religion, however, perhaps it is not God, but fate, even though in the context of the story one can argue that it is the same thing.

Borges had to come with a tale to justify his lack of understanding of the world?
I can't understand the fascination with him. It's because the abundance of obscure references, isn't it?

Pleb, pseud, etc.

Magical realist writing produces this feeling in me that I can't describe too easily, as if mystery had re-entered the world after some delay.

I've only read his more famous stories, and I don't think I've picked up on more than one or two references, but his work seems totally different from everything else I've read.

How old were you guys when you sucked your first cock? How old when you did anal?

You disliked it that much?

He just looking for more sexual partners. It's okay.

bump

omfg, wtf happened, right after bartleby this thread was nowhere to be seen for awhile. How many stories have i missed?

>Old threads
warosu.org/lit/?task=search2&search_subject=/ssrg/&search_op=op

You can always find the latest thread at

This is why I like magic realism too but I've never been that big on this particular story.

Or maybe it's just this story when it's not in the context of the rest of Labyrinths. Each of the stories circle around the same couple of themes and add something new even though they're self contained. It just works better as a collection.

Regardless how I feel about any particular story, I'll still admire Borges for his literary hoaxes and forgeries.

10/10

Did this one remind anyone of parts of Foucault's Pendulum (especially the very end) where you have a semi paranoid narrator attempting to objectively depict a secret or obscure history?

Nah. Foucault's Pendulum actually has a narrative, unlike Borges spouting shit senselessly since the first paragraph.
>muh magical realism
Fuck off. Günter Grass did it better.

>Borges is magical realism
I fucking hate Veeky Forums sometimes

I'm sorry that you couldn't enjoy the story.

It is, though. By the way, deep and insightful isn't a genre, fucking imbecile.

I would have enjoyed reading actual Mesopotamian stuff, rather than,
>hurrdurr, life is chaotic and I can't understand it, let's cash in with some shitty story about these deep thoughts I have about the stochastic nature of the world applied to some really ancient culture I have read so much about, by writing some crude shit that didn't happen and a pair of obscure references; it will sparkle all these pseuds' neurons!
That's your problem, Borges wrote dozens of extraordinary tales and you have to force this mediocre one down the throat of everybody? Fuck you.

You are a bitter little man.

Nice ad-hominem, hipster free-thinker boy.

Likewise, bitter little man.

Can we stick to Christian authors? This one made me feel uncomfortable.

Yeah but god doesn't exist, so we might as well stick to fantasy authors amirite?

That's reasonable. Fantasy it is.

Edgy comment. As expected of people who would find grace in this steaming heap of shit.

Ok, so this is what I got from it besides the God/Fate analogy with the Company. I haven't read that much of real literature so I might be stating the obvious.

I see this story as an epistemological what-if. I mean, what if since the dawn of civilization truth wasn't seen as something unique and universal (as in Plato's idealism), neither as something individual which depends on each person (relativism) or anything in between. Truth in The lottery of babylon is uncertain. It is controlled by a lottery which results and methods are uncertain. Even the very existence of it is uncertain. And at this point it might seem as if I was trying to say that the story has a sceptic ideology, but it's not really that. The Babylon citizens embrace and accept knowledge as something which is, by nature, random rather than doubting of it because of that same reason.

Then again, I don't think Borges was trying to pull a "what if" story since he's a magic REALIST.

>Then again, I don't think Borges was trying to pull a "what if" story since he's a magic REALIST.
One of the few good opinions in this thread.

thanks OP, i really liked it

>misusing ad hominem
Pseuds detected

NEW THREAD