SOURCE: "A Parody on Literariness: Seis problemas para Don Isidro Parodi," in Dispositio, Vols. V-VI, Nos. 15-16, Otoño, 1980–Invierno, 1981, pp. 143-53.

In the essay below, Cossio claims that Six Problems for Don Isidro Parodi parodies literary convention and the reading and writing processes on several levels. Cossio also examines how this work is influenced by other literary texts and historical events and figures.

In 1942, H. Bustos Domecq was born in Argentina and immediately published his first book, Seis problemas para don Isidro Parodi. Far from being supernatural, this amazing happening was the natural result of the united effort of two well known writers already engaged in the discovery of a "brave new world": Tlön. In order to find it, both Adolfo Bioy Casares and Jorge Luis Borges investigated whether "The Anglo-American Cyclopaedia" had or did not have the pages on "Uqbar." After such a detection related...