Infinity in Literature

[Ragnar Freund]

gone.

[Charles Darnay]

Quite a few short stories by Borges: mainly "garden of forking paths", "circular ruins" (sort of), and "Library of Babel" - all deal with te concept of reality existing as a set of ad infinita.


Also, the opening of Roland Barth's "Lost in the funhouse" - the longest chapter you will ever read (but it's kind of hard to reproduce it here, you need to experience it IN 3-D. (and this was before 3-D was cool).

[Calidore]

It's only a small thing, but Iain Banks' Walking on Glass has a section involving two characters forced to play various large scale games, including (IIRC) Go on an infinite board.

I read a ghost story recently about a haunted tower in which the heroine counts the steps going up, and when she descends to leave, her count goes higher with no end in sight.

Now that I think of it, one of my favorite books as a kid, William Sleator's House of Stairs, takes place entirely in a room of nothing but staircases, with no walls, floor, or ceiling ever seen.

[JBI]

Kubla Kahn, Caverns measureless to man, etc.

[Arrowni]

Well, as said above, Borges is really a no brainer.

[PoeticPassions]

Take a look at some of Milan Kundera's works. Namely, The Unbearable Lightness of Being and Immortality

[King Mob]

I'll be the third to suggest him: Borges. But a particular story comes to mind: The Immortal. His reflections on eternity on that story are priceless.

[sickboy]

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_H7t7K0juhJs/SsqfS1EvHyI/AAAAAAAAAFg/UTpBmUZjUFY/s400/twilight-book-cover-limited-edition.jpg

[marcolfo]

italo calvino's "cosmicomics"

[cafolini]

italo calvino's "cosmicomics"

A superb work on the subject. Cosmicgossip could also have been the title. The ignorant have already gotten into it, trying to turn the stories into rarety, but to me the rarety is a reflection of their own, because they can't grasp Calvino's simple humor about the idiocy of astronomy in dealing with subjects beyond the scope of knowledge and ridiculous postulations about an unknowable present inferred from past billions of years ago today.
Under this light, of course, it is not unacceptable to view astrology, however ridiculous, as a more economical system of thought. A dinner with the unicorn might have more validity in contrast.

[Whifflingpin]

"A Mouse and his Child" - Hoban, has the haunting concept of "beyond the last visible dog"

[kiki1982]

Maybe you could do something with The Discovery of Heaven by Dutch writer Harry Mulisch. I believe it is a discussion with God or something about certain things, amongst which the barbarious carpet bombing of Dreden in WWII.

[john7]

Love this forum.So much information.http://images.thebestexercisebikes.net/images/smile.gif