Dec 26, 2009

Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote | Style

The Literary Hoax
In a 1976 interview, Borges admitted that "Pierre Menard" is "what we might call a mystification, or a hoax." A hoax is an attempt to present a text as authentic, either for monetary gain or as a joke. A literary hoax often takes the form of a text that the author presents as authentic, perhaps as translation of a recently discovered scroll or long-lost manuscript. In one of the chapters of Don Quixote rewritten by Menard, chapter IX of Book I, the narrator tells of having purchased by chance an old Arabic scroll at the silk market, and mentions that...