stuck at my evil corporate job where they force me to use ai. spending all day talking to a machine that lies to you sounds like it couldve been the basis for a borges story
I recently read Pierre Menard, Author of Quixote for the first time and was floored. I have never read anything like it. I will surely go back and re-read it soon, but I wanted to sit with my first impressions of it for a while first.
As I was reading it I first thought that Borges was making a mockery of the literary critique, as this imagined critic is desperately trying to find some meaning/profundity in what any regular person would recognize as a ridiculous endeavor. But at some point it clicked that Borges isn't making a mockery, but some sort of earnest commentary about what it means to be both a reader and a writer. Something about literature transcending just the words on the page, I don't know, when I say it it sounds corny but in the story it sounds beautiful. I also was wondering if some element is also about the act of translating works of literature - essentially writing the same exact words as someone else but inevitably imbuing it with some new meaning.
Ironically I don't know much about Borges; is this interpretation off the mark? Are there other things I didn't pick up on or things to pay closer attention to on a re-read? And one other thing that has been nagging me: why Quixote? Surely there is some meaning in Borges' choice of the work the story is centered around, since he could've picked anything. I've never read Quixote so I lack the context here.