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Gnomon
Jorge Luis Borges - "Death and the Compass"
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Excellent comparison! The name Lönnrot in Gnomon struck me as unusual. I failed to recall that I had encountered it before, in "Death and the Compass," which has all the resemblances you point out.I did notice other Borgesian elements in Nick Harkaway's novel. The motif of libraries and ancient books may have been influenced by Borges. A more striking parallel may be the idea of dreaming or imagining something into being, which is represented in Borges by his story "The Circular Ruins." That in turn brings to mind a couple of other points of reference, but I may mention them separately.
Do you see any other bits of Borges in Gnomon, Paul?
Yeah, definitely some echoes of "The Circular Ruins" along with "Death and the Compass." The obsession with books, which may or may not have existed, the labyrinths and the focus on ancient religion and philosophy were all very Borgesian in general. I also thought of the story "Shakespeare's Memory" from his last collection, in which an old academic is gifted Shakespeare's memory and struggles to keep his identity straight and to figure out what to do with the memories. Shakespeare's memories even have to unfold, or take root in the new mind over time, in a process.
All good points, and I didn't think of any of them. I might reread "Shakespeare's Memory," since it's very fuzzy in my recollection. The interest in ancient and supposedly lost books did remind me of something else, though: Umberto Eco's Name of the Rose, which (in case you don't know it) involves Aristotle's lost treatise on comedy. And the notion of dreaming up something which then becomes real is kind of an aspect of Eco's Foucault's Pendulum.
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The main character, Erik Lonnrott, is a detective that has to solve a series of murders that seem to be connected to the kabbalistic investigation of the name of God. The brilliant detective ties the pieces together after three murders, only to realize there will be one more, so he goes to stop it. It turns out, however, that it was a trap set by the killer, who knew the detective would overthink it and go for the deeper meaning (the first crime was not meant to be part of a pattern). Lonnrot, facing death, tells the killer he made things much too complicated and could have used fewer crimes to the same end. The killer promises that next time he kills Lonnrot, he'll make his labyrinth a straight line, and kills him.
I think the parallels are pretty interesting, with Neith as the detective, and Regno Lonnrot as both the first victim and killer, depending on where we are in the story. And, of course, there's a trap that works partially by being far more complicated than necessary. I'm thinking I'll reread the story again to see what it brings to mind, but I thought the use of the name was a nice touch.