The Book of Sand

The Book of Sand is a physical manifestation of infinity and of all literature and knowledge. It has infinite pages, which implies the existence of infinity as a concept and leads both the narrator and the salesman to consider disturbing abstractions of space and time. It also leads the narrator to consider the more physical horror that burning the book might present, as he fears that its infinite smoke would end the world. This frames the book as an object of cosmic horror that contradicts and destroys the way that each character sees the world. The book subverts the fundamental expectations of natural law, since it is composed of infinite matter, and the realization of this subversion then calls into question all remaining laws of reality.

At the same time, given its infinite and constantly changing nature, the book theoretically contains more information and writing than any other collection. This element of the fantasy of the book presents the inherent contradictions and frustrations implicit in the pursuit of knowledge: Because knowledge is an infinite, perpetually growing field, its pursuit has no ending. One cannot possess all the knowledge and information in the universe, because the pool of knowledge will always be expanding. The illegibility of the text supports the fundamental idea that true or complete knowledge is always out of reach.

The illustrations in the Book of Sand are its only meaningful components. The writing itself is not readable by either character, and even the man who possessed the book prior to the salesman could not read it. Images, though, are a universal language; the anchor and the mask are identifiable to the narrator, even though he cannot read the surrounding text. Conceptually, the images allow the book to carry meaning despite the illegibility of its text, which allows the narrator to create a theoretical system of order and understanding in the book. His assertion that images appear every 2,000 pages allows him to grasp at some sense of structure and intention behind the text.

The images, then, present a specific level of subjective understanding in the story, as they are the only anchoring points of the book. The narrator finds meaning in them, but he cannot understand the actual descriptions and explanations that surround them. In this way, the images represent a physical understanding of reality; as a person sees the world from only their own perspective, they are seeing the images of the book without getting the fullest possible explanation of what they see. The narrator’s focus on the illustrations reduces the study and pursuit of knowledge to the limitations of what can be understood. Though they imply intention and order, no clear and full understanding of the images and their patterns can be discerned without a comprehension of the text; text and image combine to construct textual meaning.