Blog Week 1

I recently read the short story, “The Garden of Forking Paths,” written by Jorge Luis Borges. In it Borges describes a reality in which all possible outcomes of every possible action can, and do exist in some alternate reality. This was the beginning of the hypertext novel, although it is not a hypertext novel in itself. The idea is that of a character in the story named Ts’ui Pen. This character was said to devote thirteen years of his life to the creation of a novel and a maze. Eventually, the protagonist realizes that the novel and the labyrinth are one in the same. This is the main idea behind the hypertext novel. A novel with no real end, but instead a never-ending circular path of cause and effect. This idea is important, in my opinion, because it introduces the idea of divergent reality, and cause and effect.
I think that the author’s point was that every cause entails at least one, and in his reality infinitely many, effects. A philosopher would have a field day with this work because of the broad ideas contained within, but its real contributions may be the ideas themselves and their connections to modern technology, like the game Zork, created by the Programming Technology Division of the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science. I am not proposing a connection, but the ideas are similar. The obvious difference is that the game Zork relies on specific inputs and outputs, whereas Borges’ reality was said to contain infinitely many convergent and divergent paths like a very large garden. Overall, I thought that “The Garden of Forking Paths” was interesting and insightful.
I have also read an excerpt from the first chapter of Italo Calvino’s “If on a winter’s night a Traveler,” which was a difficult read. Although its connection to the other selections is obvious it lacks the depth that “The Garden of Forking Paths” had. Though, to be fair I must say that I only read an excerpt from the first chapter, and it is unfair to judge it based solely on that. In this excerpt the author describes the most likely scenarios that led the reader to seek out and buy the book. This book is very unorthodox in this way because instead of a traditional third person narrative, the author interacts with the reader, which makes it interesting. The author’s purpose seems to be to get the reader to think about what a book should be. He proves that a traditional novel is not the only way a book can be organized. It is similar to “The Garden of Forking Paths,” because the author presents several possible reasons for a particular action which shows the convergence idea of Borges’ short story.