Every book has a place that it occupies based on the categories attributed to it by humans—just think about how books are shelved at public libraries and you'll know what I mean. Now, when the narrator of "El Libro de Arena" purchases the Book of Sand, he believes at first that the book should substitute the blackletter Wycliffe Bible:
"I though of hiding the Book of Sand in the space left by the Wycliffe, but I finally opted to hide it behind some shoddy volumes of the Thousand and One Nights."
The fact that he hides the Book of Sand behind the Thousand and One Nights is relevant for both postcolonial readings and queer readings. For postcolonial readings because Borges compares the fantastic nature of the Book of Sand with the magical tales found in the Thousands and One Nights. Any preliminary reading of the Thousand and One Nights also reveals that apart from being fantastic, the background of the tales and the frame story are also sexual. At least in this sense the Book of Sand has sexual connotations to it.
But let me get back to the quote. So he hides the Book of Sand behind other books. One would think he's placing the books on a bookshelf; however, in a different Borges story we find out where precisely the books are located. In "The Other," an older Borges meets a younger skeptical Borges and has to prove that they are the same person. He tells the younger Borges that he knows what he keeps in his closet both literally and metaphorically:
"In the wardrobe closet in your room, there are two rows of books: the three volumes of Lane's translation of the Thousand and One Nights—which Lane called The Arabian Nights Entertainment—with steel engravings and notes in fine print between the chapters, Quicherat's Latin dictionary, Tacitus' Germania in Latin and in Gordon's English version, a Quixote in the Garnier edition, a copy of Rivera Indarte's Tablas de Sangre signed by the author, Carlyle's Sartor Resartus, a biography of Amiel, and, hidden behind the others, a paperbound volume detailing the sexual customs of the Balkans. Nor have I forgotten a certain afternoon in a second-floor apartment on the Plaza Dubourg."
Even though Borges was a private man and would not speak about his private life, especially about his relationships with women, now we know the contents of Borges' closet: He has his favorite books hidden away there, including a book which we can technically term pornographic even though he only gives us a description of it and doesn't give us its title ("a paperbound volume detailing the sexual customs of the Balkans"). And he also tantalizingly gives us a detail which may or may not refer to some sexual episode in Borges' life ("Nor have I forgotten a certain afternoon..."). In this small confession, then, Borges tells us the contents of his closet, or if I phrase this differently, Borges has come out of the closet—as much as Borges can or would come out anyway.
My point is that when the narrator of "El Libro de Arena" hides the Book of Sand, he's placing it in the closet, hidden away behind his stash of personally favorite books. By hiding the Book of Sand in his closet, the book becomes a part of Borges' private and sexual identity, that aspect of his life which he does not openly share with others, which is secretive, closeted, undisclosed, personal.
If we think about the Book of Sand as connected with Borges' private-sexual identity (private because sexual and sexual because private), then his failed attempt to catalog and categorize the Book of Sand tells us something about the queer nature of his private-sexual identity. Borges cannot understand his own private-sexual identity, he cannot catalog or categorize it, he can only hide it away from others. No wonder Borges never spoke about his private and sexual life: he never understood it.
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