Rader has published several articles on twentieth- century American and Latin American literature. In this essay, he discusses Borges' innovative style and his postmodernist tendencies, despite the fact that he was engaging in postmodernist techniques before the term was ever coined.

Unfortunately, when scholars and readers think of Jorge Luis Borges, they do not think of a funny man. Typically, people characterize Borges and his work as abstract, philosophical, difficult, enigmatic, labyrinthine, but rarely humorous and playful. In "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote," Borges is at his best because while the story meets all of the standard Borges criteria mentioned above, it is also one of his funniest pieces. Its utter absurdity, its creative form, its textuality, and its lack of traditional narrativity mark it as a classic postmodern text; however, the concept of postmodernism had yet to be articulated when Borges was working on the...