The chapter delves into the intricate process of a character named Menard attempting to rewrite the classic novel Quixote word for word. Menard's ambitious goal challenges the notion of originality and authorship, as he rejects a simplistic method for a more complex strategy. The discussion explores Menard's unconventional approach, reflecting on the challenges he faces and the metafictional elements at play.
David and Tamler dive into “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote,” a very funny Borges story that also raises deep questions about authorship, reading, and interpretation. What would it mean for the same text to be written by two different authors more than three hundred years apart? Is this story the post-modernist manifesto that literary critics like Roland Barthes believed it to be? Or is the narrator in the story just a delusional sycophant, a victim of Menard’s practical joke – and the story by extension, a practical joke by Borges on the post-modernist movement to come?
Plus, My Little Pony fans finally confront their Nazi problem.
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