The Literary Hoax

In a 1976 interview, Borges admitted that "Pierre Menard" is "what we might call a mystification, or a hoax." A hoax is an attempt to present a text as authentic, either for monetary gain or as a joke. A literary hoax often takes the form of a text that the author presents as authentic, perhaps as translation of a recently discovered scroll or long-lost manuscript. In one of the chapters of Don Quixote rewritten by Menard, chapter IX of Book I, the narrator tells of having purchased by chance an old Arabic scroll at the silk market, and mentions that the scroll just happened to contain a missing fragment of the history of Don Quixote of La Mancha. Having found the missing piece, the narrator continues his story. Borges parodies the found manuscript with Menard's re-invented manuscript. Rather than finding a lost work, however, Menard writes a...