An Invitation to Our Readers . . .
In “John Wilkins’ Analytical Language,”[1] Jorge Luis Borges describes a fantastical bestiary:
These ambiguities, redundancies, and deficiencies recall those attributed by Dr. Franz Kuhn to a certain Chinese encyclopedia called the Heavenly Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge. In its distant pages it is written that animals are divided into (a) those that belong to the emperor; (b) embalmed ones; (c) those that are trained; (d) suckling pigs; (e) mermaids; (f) fabulous ones; (g) stray dogs; (h) those that are included in this classification; (i) those that tremble as if they were mad; (j) innumerable ones; (k) those drawn with a very fine camel's-hair brush; (l) etcetera; (m) those that have just broken the flower vase; (n) those that at a distance resemble flies. The Bibliographical Institute of Brussels also exercises chaos: it has parceled the universe into 1,000 subdivisions...
Mike and Marc, the contributors to California Attorney's Fees are busy constructing their own bestiary of California Attorney’s Fees – see our sidebar list of categories. We invite our readers to inform us of any beasts that they have encountered in the strange zoo of California attorney’s fees, and we will happily consider it for inclusion in our bestiary.
[1] "John Wilkins' Analytical Language", translator Eliot Weinberger; included in Selected nonfictions: Jorge Luis Borges", ed. Eliot Weinberger; 1999, Penguin Books, ISBN 0-14-029011-7. The essay was originally published as "El idioma analítico de John Wilkins", La Nación, 8 February 1942, and republished in Otras inquisiciones. Our source: Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celestial_Emporium_of_Benevolent_Recognition
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