The key premise eloquently argued by so many critics in the past is that Borges's permanently open stories are in themselves examples of the 'total book' of literature, i.e. palimpsests in the sense of Genette's 'livre infini'. This paper focuses on an aspect of Borges's works that has not yet received due critical attention, namely, the footnotes, seeing these as imaginative devices that add to this livre by generating new readings.