The Borges Toolkit
Originally compiled by the Argentine Soviet of Letters (1952-53). Reclassified by the Zagreb Soviet in 1989 under Archive of Symbolic Weapons. Declassified by MPSoL, 2025. This is the Armory Conversion Copy.
Durable A5 field copy for marking, folding, and deployment use.
About this book
What This Book Is
The Borges Toolkit is not literary criticism.
It is a field manual for understanding - and deploying - recursive narrative systems.
It dissects the architecture behind:
- metafiction
- ontological instability
- structural sabotage
- authorial self-erasure
- world replacement through documentation
Then it hands you the mechanisms.
Clean. Numbered. Operational.
What It Does
This edition studies the hidden continuity between:
- Don Quixote (self-consuming authorship)
- Moby-Dick (systemic recursion)
- Borges (compression into device)
It argues that postmodernism is not a period - it is a recurring structural event.
And once you understand the devices, you cannot be seduced by them again.
The trance breaks.
Included Inside
- The Tlon Protocol
- Structural Reorientation (Semiocide)
- Infinite Compression
- Identity Dislocation
- Recursive Drift
- Deployment Notes and Failure Cases
- Armory Margin Annotations
This edition contains the hybridized Armory form that circulated prior to the Day of Observance (1993). Conversion points are marked.
As noted in the official copy:
"Use with caution. The text is known to generate recursive excess when read aloud in committee."
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Why This Edition Matters
Most readers admire Borges.
This manual extracts him.
The Toolkit treats stories not as art objects, but as engineered systems - machines that rewire perception.
It makes fiction harder to consume.
It makes you harder to manipulate.
It is not a celebration.
It is an exposure.
Who It's For
- Writers who suspect structure is the real battleground
- Readers tired of being dazzled by mirrors
- Editors who want to recognize the trick before it lands
- Anyone who has felt that fiction stopped being entertainment and became terrain
Warning
Once you understand these tools, it becomes very difficult to read - or write - the same way again.
This is not a book about Borges.
It is a manual about how narrative replaces reality.
Enter carefully.
Specs
| Format | A5 (148 × 210 mm) |
| Length | ~95 pages |
| Binding | Perfect bound |
| Cover | Matte laminate |
| License | CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 |
| SKU | TBT-1953-A5 |
License
Released under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. You may share and adapt with attribution, non-commercially, and under the same license.
Shipping & Returns
Printed and fulfilled via Lulu. Typical delivery: 5–10 business days. Free PDF remains available regardless of print purchase. Returns accepted within 14 days for undamaged items; contact Norman Rule.
