Menard is an avid reader of Cervantes’ Quixote and isn’t satisfied only with reading—he wants to actually write the Quixote. He embarks on a mission:He did not want to compose another Quixote—which is easy—but the Quixote itself. Needless to say, he never contemplated a mechanical transcription of the original; he did not propose to copy it. His admirable intention was to produce a few pages which would coincide—word for word and line for line—with those of Miguel de Cervantes. (39)24This project, and the narrator’s description of it, raises many questions about the nature of authorship. Firstly, how can “the Quixote itself”—being distinguished from “another Quixote”— refer to anything besides the original book by Cervantes? Menard’s opinion, as conveyed by the narrator, seems to be that these two are wildly different things. To write “another” Quixote is to replicate the original. To write the Quixote itselfis to be original—to write something that is one-of-a-kind—and so, as the narrator points out, he obviously cannot copy it out word for word. What follows is a puzzling and ironic statement; how can Menard’s goal be to write something identical to “the Quixote itself” without copying it? Even if Menard did not look at the Quixote as he was writing, he was first and foremost a devout reader of the book; anything he wrote down would be drawn from his memory and experience as a reader—the words he wrote would be based on his understanding of the words Cervantes wrote—and therefore, in essence, a copy.Menard sets out to achieve this impossible task with a strategy even more impossible to enact— a strategy the narrator, however, deems easy: “The first method he conceived was relatively simple. Know Spanish well, recover the Catholic faith, fight against the Moors or the Turk, forget the history of Europe between the years 1602 and 1918, be Miguel de Cervantes” (40).25 This strategy carries the implicit belief that Cervantes’ life and historical context—his biographical information—were the most essential factors in the creation of his novel. From this stance, to write “the Quixote itself” Menard need only live his life as Cervantes, and the Quixote would follow. This would assume that Menard would be able to understand Cervantes’ intentions and inspirations in the Quixote, which are, of course, unknowable.In this particularly outlandish moment, the narrator jumps into conversation with the reader directly after relating that Menard deems this approach too easy: “Rather as impossible! my reader will say. Granted, but the undertaking was impossible from the very beginning and of all the impossible ways of carrying it out, this was the least interesting” (40).26 This moment is striking because it calls attention to the fact that not only is the story about an author (Menard) of a bizarre project and its reception by a friend and reader (the narrator)—it’s also about our response as readers to the project and its defense, given by the narrator. That is, the narrator also carries the status of “author.” In the original Spanish, “el lector”—the reader—would say that the project was impossible. Is the narrator referring to the reader of Menard’s work or the reader of this critical review? The English translation above takes the second interpretation, translating “el lector” to “my reader”; this calls attention to the narrator’s own awareness of himself as an author with a relationship to his reader, and engages the reader—plays with the reader—to enter into a dialogue.The most intriguing and absurd part of this story, however, comes when the narrator actually analyzes Menard’s writing. He describes comparing Menard’s Quixote to Cervantes’ as “una revelación” (52)—and juxtaposes an excerpt from chapter nine of each author’s Quixote. Unsurprisingly, the two excerpts are identical. The narrator offers first Cervantes’ writing (a piece of the Quixote itself…) and renders it “a mere rhetorical praise of history” (43).27 Then, as a “contrast”, he offers Menard’s verbatim reconstruction, and follows up with this analysis: “The contrast in style is also vivid. The archaic style of Menard—quite foreign, after all—suffers from a certain affectation. Not so that of his forerunner, who handles with ease the current Spanish of his time” (43).28