A review by rbcp82
Packing My Library: An Elegy and Ten Digressions by Alberto Manguel

5.0

Notes:
I think "library," and I'm immediately struck by the paradox that a library undermines whatever order it might possess...

Anarchy under the appearance of order

...because we don't really possess them: books possess us.

To what success can an artist aspire? How can a writer achieve his purpose when all he has at his disposal is the imperfect tool of language? And above all: What is created when an artist sets out to create? Does a new, forbidden world come into being or is a dark mirror of this world lifted up for us to gaze it? Is a work of art a lasting reality or an imperfect lie?

Inexpressible epiphany

Our creations, our Golems or our libraries, are at best things that suggest an approximation to a copy of our blurry intuition of the real thing, itself an imperfect imitation of an ineffable archetype.

library = to set up something that aspires to an order, an imperfect dream of order

"Since life is a voyage or a battle, every story is either the Iliad or the Odyssey."