Author Quickie Guide

The Scriptorium
Various Authors
So many brilliant writers, so little time. The Scriptorium is an index of pages devoted to experimental twentieth-century authors who have not yet been developed for a major site. Currently online at the Scriptorium you may find J.G. Ballard, John Barth, John Hawkes, William Gaddis, Mervyn Peake, Georges Perec, Raymond Queneau, Alain Robbe-Grillet and Jeanette Winterson; others are in the works.

Apmonia
Samuel Beckett
How it is with Samuel Beckett in many parts as it is heard and said. The mediation of the heart, or, as Beckett summed up his own work, simply a stain upon silence, is what we contemplate here. What can be said to that? What can be said about that? What can be said? Sometimes laughter when it seems worth the effort. How it will be with Samuel Beckett to be heard and said. Come in and wait for it all to mean something.

The Garden of Forking Paths
Jorge Luis Borges
Legend states that the Web is just one manifestation of the Library of Babel, an echo through time and space of something higher and possibly more profound; and if used correctly, perhaps a portal to the world of Orbis Tertius; or maybe it’s an endless and circular novel, or even a maze....

Porta Ludovica
Umberto Eco
Impossibly located at a confluence of roads which are never the same twice, Porta Ludovica shelters the visions of prophets and fools alike, where dreamers piece together the history of their past lives, and the deluded hatch conspiracies in the darkness of ignorance. Be careful, for language here is a shimmering trap, and books can cast their spells over all – whether scholar or murderer; madman or monk.

Macondo
Gabriel García Márquez
Situated in mystical Latin America, Macondo is a sleepy village where flowers and solitude fall like rain, the decrees of dictators control space and time, and poets hallucinate machines to remember a craftily slipping reality.

The Brazen Head
James Joyce
What would a Libyrinth be without a cozy pub? Come visit the Brazen Head, where Irish genius is featured as the drink of the day – dark and mysterious, dense and yet elevating, and always leading to a sense of inner illumination. An acquired taste, perhaps; but the taps are flowing and I’m buying the round, so drop in and have a pint.

Das Schloss
Franz Kafka
Welcome to Das Schloss, which means both “the Castle” and “the Lock.” On your left is an endless hallway, on your right is an endless roadway, in front of you is a brick wall. Feel free to pick among the details as you please, everyone else does. But remember this: the keys are never quite as simple as they seem.

Spermatikos Logos
Thomas Pynchon
The Spermatikos Logos. Enter the halls of “The White Visitation,” where the elusive Pynchon has stocked his hermetic madhouse with the seed and the egg, the word and the world, the Pointsman and the Antipointsman. This is a realm where the parabolic skies of darkness, paranoia and doubt may part at any time without warning – only to reveal a glittering constellation of insights painful in its sudden clarity.