In May 1940—30 years before his conversation with National Review founder William F. Buckley—the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges published Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius, the closest thing to a perfect narrative I have ever read.
The story is a brain-melting account of the disintegration of ordinary reality after contact with a fictional world called Tlön.
Roosevelt Montás is a senior lecturer in American Studies and English at Columbia University and the author of 'Rescuing Socrates: How the Great Books Changed My Life and Why They Matter for a New Generation.' From 2008-2018, he served as director of the Center for the Core Curriculum at Columbia University.
