The Total Library: Non-Fiction, 1922–1986 by Jorge Luis Borges
Published 1999 · 576 pages · 130,000 words · about 11 hours at an average pace · Essays & Criticism, Non-Fiction
How hard is The Total Library: Non-Fiction, 1922–1986 to read?
The Total Library: Non-Fiction, 1922–1986 scores 67 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it quite demanding. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 65 out of 100
- Elevated diction with precise philosophical and philological terms used across a wide range of subjects.
- Sentence structure: 58 out of 100
- Abstraction: 78 out of 100
- Metaphysical speculation and aesthetic argument raised to high abstraction even in ostensibly occasional pieces.
- Information density: 80 out of 100
- Each essay compresses erudition; a single paragraph may refer to a dozen authors across several centuries.
- Narrative indirection: 20 out of 100
- Arguments are stated but often arrive obliquely through analogy or historical juxtaposition.
- Symbolic density: 22 out of 100
- Critical prose shades into symbolic register; labyrinths, mirrors, and libraries recur as cognitive metaphors.
- Ironic distance: 25 out of 100
- Borges deploys irony as a structural device; the essays perform the instability they describe.
- Resolution withholding: 18 out of 100
- Essays often end on a question or paradox rather than a resolved conclusion.
- Structural complexity: 38 out of 100
- Individual essays are tight and self-contained; the collection is thematically cohesive rather than argumentatively sequential.
How The Total Library: Non-Fiction, 1922–1986 is regarded
The Total Library: Non-Fiction, 1922–1986 holds a literary regard score of 91 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.