Any Chance there is a connection, Chums?
Mark Kohut
markekohut at yahoo.com
Thu Apr 8 19:59:11 CDT 2010
Forgive if this has been posted earlier. I remember some posting re
Borges' work but Ficciones is a book I read evidently before I had acquired
a memory, so I don't remember the postings.
........anyway......"You can read that again", as Nabokov always sez.
And I did and there is "The Babylon Lottery" story in Ficciones......narrator recounts
the history of the lottery wherein we learn how it moved from rewarding a select few
to where a few penalties were placed in with winning tickets....fines which lead to
jail time for some.......
Then the lottery became "secret, free of charge and open to all"... and its operations
became so complex that the Lottery Company became the major civil power.......
And in its more advanced stages it is defined as "an interpolation of chance into the order of the
world" ...the world ruled by chance then INTENTIONALLY is made to have some random mistakes
Then this:
"The Company, with divine modesty, eludes all publicity, Its agents, as is only natural, are secret.
The orders which it is continually sending out do not differ from those lavishly issued by imposters.
Besides, who can ever boast of of being a mere imposter? [semi-famous Borges line akin to Proverb
3, maybe?] The inebriate who improvises an absurd mandate, the dreamer who suddenly awakes to
choke the woman who lies at his side to death [dream like this in AtD??], do they not both, perhaps,
carry out a secret decision by the Company?
lotsa echoes of the Power behind the Chums before they go indie to me...anyone, anyone?
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