Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius By Jorge Borges

Fiction is innately known to move us, entertain us and even confound us. By piecing together abstract worlds and thoughts, fiction guides the reader to an endless space of possibility. The characteristic most associated with literary fiction is the tendency to doubt existence while questioning the reality of the literature. One author famous for his use of literary fiction is Jorge Borges, who focuses his stories around this sense of fabrication. In the foreword for his eight stories Borges writes, “The better way to go about it is to pretend that those books already exist, and offer a summary, a commentary on them” (pg 67). Immediately, Borges seems to forewarn the reader of the fiction incorporated in Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius. This story is focused on Tlön, an imaginary region in Uqbar that proves to be an invented location. Through this fiction, Borges attempts to propose an ideology of a fake world that is slowly becoming our reality, while proving the importance of using fiction as it serves

Borges, even admitting his own lethargy, “a more reasonable, more inept, and more lazy man” (pg 67), comes off as one to do minimal work, but in the most efficient way. Therefore in writing his story of Tlön, why should he struggle finding a book which portrayed exactly what he wanted his audience to read, when he could simply construct it on his own? With this format, Borges gave himself more freedom to write, and saved more time and hassle than he could imagine. In using fictitious literature, he had the flexibility to alter specifics and opinions as his writing progressed. Instead of swaying his views towards writing that exists, it was easier and more logical to sway writing to fit his thought process, and in this sense, create a more thorough and believable piece of