SOURCE: "The Mirror and the Lie: Two Stories by Jorge Luis Borges and Adolfo Bioy Casares," in Modern Fiction Studies, Vol. 19, No. 3, Autumn, 1973, pp. 353-62.

In the following essay, Mac Adam focuses on the use of language and narrative to demonstrate that two stories written jointly by Bioy Casares and Jorge Luis Borges, "El hijo de su amigo" and "La fiesta del Monstruo, "satirize life in Buenos Aires during the first presidency of Juan Perón.

The literary collaborations of Jorge Luis Borges and Adolfo Bioy Casares are virtually unknown. This is understandable because Borges and Bioy (alias H. Bustos Domecq, B. Suárez Lynch, or B. Lynch Davis) have consistently regarded these texts as unimportant jokes. They have reprinted only a few and have guaranteed the others' consignment to oblivion by publishing them in newspapers or ephemeral journals. Another reason that the collaborations are not being read...