In Borges' most famous fiction a contemporary writer, Pierre Menard, is called "author of the Quixote," a title that he does not entirely deserve, since he wrote only certain segments of Cervantes' masterpiece. But those segments which he did write correspond in every particular, and without the slightest help from Cervantes, to the text of the earlier work. The deadpan narrator of this story makes clear that, superficial identity aside, Menard's work is utterly original, since behind each of his words lay a totally different motivation from that of Cervantes, and even in some ways superior, since to write the idiom of Cervantes in the 20th century, and without a single lapse, is many times more difficult than the task facing the original author. This serious story makes a quite serious point about the art of reading, though no one can read it without being at, and sometimes...