The State of Grace,
Author of Hamlet

Today's Harvard Crimson:



The texts in question are said
to be manuscripts of
"Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote,"
and "The Library of Babel."

The latter deals (like
"The Mountains of Pi")
with literature that can
be seen as the result
of a random process--
such as the lottery in
another story by Borges.

A less sinister lottery
is that of Pennsylvania--
known to some as
 "the Keystone State."
I prefer to think of it as
"the State of Grace."



Click on picture for details.

The "NITE" number 108 leads us
naturally to 1/08:

This (and yesterday's "DAY" number 133)
suggests we consult page 133 of
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations
of 1919.  At the top of this
page we find...

"O day and night,
but this is wondrous strange!"

-- Hamlet, Act I, Scene 5

Another figure from 1/08,
St. Mary Magdalene, might,
adapting the words of Borges,
offer the following observation:

"Shakespeare's text and the lottery's
are verbally identical, but the second
is almost infinitely richer.
(More ambiguous, detractors will
  say, but ambiguity is richness.)"

Related material: 11/22.