The Invisible Library

June 28, 2005 1:06 PM

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books, pseudobiblia, artifictions, fabled tomes, libris phantastica, and all manner of books unwritten, unread, unpublished, and unfound.
posted by carter (20 comments total)

Kilgore Trout? Check. I approve.
posted by Robot Johnny at 1:42 PM on June 28, 2005

This might explain the exasperation I hear from the interlibrary loan librarians....
posted by IndigoJones at 1:52 PM on June 28, 2005

Bah!

Doesn't include one of the classic imaginary books, the one appearing inside Don Quijote.
posted by reality at 1:59 PM on June 28, 2005

Related thread.

Not meant to imply this is a double post, just pointing to commentary that may be of interest.
posted by languagehat at 1:59 PM on June 28, 2005

It's fun to see how many I remember. And yeah I looked for Kilgore too.
posted by arse_hat at 2:09 PM on June 28, 2005

It is a double, it was posted in 2002 or something.

It's too bad it hasn't been updated much since then, either. I'd love to see all of the information on the books in Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell.
posted by jacquilynne at 2:11 PM on June 28, 2005

I always wanted to read The Secret Goldfish by D.B. Caulfield.
posted by SisterHavana at 2:19 PM on June 28, 2005

Rats! Searched on URL and "invisible library," etc. etc. etc.
posted by carter at 2:27 PM on June 28, 2005

Any relation to the Invisible College? 'Cause my invisible tuition is...well, invisible.

How can Kilgore Trout be artificial? I have a softcover copy of Venus on the Half Shell right here!
(obligatory Necronomicon, etc. of course, Ftagn)
posted by Smedleyman at 3:33 PM on June 28, 2005

The Kilgore Trout novel you have, Smedleyman, was written by Philip Jose Farmer. Vonnegut was later pissed off about it, even though he gave him permission to write it.
posted by interrobang at 3:39 PM on June 28, 2005

Cool beans.
posted by Specklet at 3:50 PM on June 28, 2005

Reminds me of Lucien's dream library from The Sandman series, all the stories that were dreampt but never written down.
posted by jonson at 4:31 PM on June 28, 2005

It's like the Rocklopedia Fakebandica for readers.
posted by Slack-a-gogo at 4:38 PM on June 28, 2005

Frankly, I was expecting more entries from the Library of Babel.
posted by LionIndex at 4:51 PM on June 28, 2005

there's Calvino...
posted by hototogisu at 4:58 PM on June 28, 2005

I posted it a million years ago, but it's such a nice link I think we should have revisitation rights.
posted by taz at 10:05 PM on June 28, 2005

LionIndex.

It would be redundent. All those books would be included in Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett*.

* (In the l-space section of the Unseen Univerity Library.)
posted by Axandor at 12:48 AM on June 29, 2005

Ah, thanks taz. I was sure it had had its own post, but couldn't find it. I tried both the laughable "Search MetaFilter" (from day one) and Google, as I imagine the poster did. Such is life on the MeFi Search page.
posted by languagehat at 5:52 AM on June 29, 2005

Yeah, Borges has to take the biscuit for positing an infinite library of imaginary books... It's a shame the site doesn't go into more detail about the background of these books... I'd have browsed a lot longer
posted by 0bvious at 6:29 AM on June 29, 2005

Very nice. I missed it's first linking, so it was invisible to me until this moment.
posted by OmieWise at 11:04 AM on June 30, 2005