Tuesday 14 February 2006

A library of classics

Have you ever wanted to track down all those books that appear in other books? You know, books like Panther Without Eyelashes by Adeodato Lampustri, which appears in Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum; or Clinton York's classic A History of Nebraska from the Richard Brautigan novel Abortion: An Historical Romance; or how about the seminal reference work On the Polyphonic Motets of Lassus which appears in one of the later Sherlock Holmes adventure stories?

Well, you can't track them down of course, as they're all imaginary books: they exist only in the works of fiction in which they appear. But you can do the next best thing -- you can browse the catalogue of the Imaginary Library.
The Invisible Library is a collection of books that only appear in other books. Within the library's catalog you will find imaginary books, pseudobiblia, artifictions, fabled tomes, libris phantastica, and all manner of books unwritten, unread, unpublished, and unfound.
Enter the portals here. [Hat tip Berlin Bear]

LINK: The Invisible Library

5 comments:

Rick said...

So there's a 'library' of books that don't exist at long last. And we're supposed to care?!

That's like going to a restarant and getting a menu of all the thing you can't order. A phone book of invalid numbers. Or it's like a tool kit that doesn't work in this universe. Or a packet of seeds that can't grow.

What the fuck man?

Peter Cresswell said...

No, I wouldn't expect you to give a shit, Rick.

Anonymous said...

Rick whined:

"That's like going to a restarant (sic) and..."

Such a webpage is only of interest to those who like to explore all the little inside-jokes that some authors litter their prose with. In other words, it is of interest to those who enjoy sucking the marrow out of a book.

Those who have only even sucked the marrow out of their thumb would no doubt have cause to query PC's motives...

Rick said...

Comes a time when the marrow runs out and he who sucks marrow becomes he who just plain sucks.

BerlinBear said...

By God there are some cultureless heathens about!

I think it's fantastic, for the record. Thanks for the link PC.