Episode 192: Postmodern Wet Dreams (Borges' "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote")

[00:00:00] Very Bad Wizards is a podcast with a philosopher, my dad and psychologist Dave Pizarro having an informal discussion about issues in science and ethics. Please note that the discussion contains bad words that I'm not allowed to say and knowing my dad some very inappropriate jokes.

[00:00:17] Yeah well what are you gonna do? Life's a bitch and then you die right? Sometimes. Sometimes life's a bitch and then you keep living. Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain. Are you? They think deep thoughts and with no more brains than you have. B-

[00:01:03] Anybody can have a brain? You're a very bad man. I'm a very good man. Just a very bad wizard. Welcome to Very Bad Wizards, I'm Tamler Sommers from the University of Houston. Dave the long time New York Times columnist David Brooks, your boy tweeted

[00:01:24] If you're part of that small shrinking band who still think cancel culture is a myth, read this compassionate piece from Yasha Monk. Are you finally convinced now? My name's David Pizarro from Cornell University. Who's Yasha Monk? Who's that?

[00:01:45] So he's a guy that all of a sudden in this new reality writes for the Atlantic and everybody loves, but I had never heard of him before like six months ago. And now he's you know he's a darling of the centrist media.

[00:02:01] Yeah, it's kind of you to call them centrist. I mean there. But like I don't have anything against him.

[00:02:09] This okay, I have a lot of thoughts about this but before because I know I'm going to ramble on let's just say what we're actually going to talk about in segment two, which is the wonderful Borges story Pierre Menard author of the Quixote.

[00:02:24] So your question allows me just a little bit of freedom to talk about the reaction we had to last episodes opening segment. And I won't meander on that.

[00:02:36] A lot of our listeners agreed with us and reached out to us and told us they loved it and a lot of a lot of listeners disagreed and there were very vocal discussions on Reddit and on Twitter, but I respect them all and I like that our listeners disagree with us.

[00:02:50] But specifically your question about cancel culture. I think it's a problem. I just don't know that it is as it is changed as much as people think it has like I'll and let me say but with a quick story in 1992. During the riots in LA.

[00:03:13] I had a professor a teacher in high school who got canceled. He basically said something that was insensitive and the black students in our in our school, very small school were for some of them were very offended and it just kind of destroyed his life as a teacher.

[00:03:31] I don't like that and I don't want people to think that when we talk about whether or not it's a problem or whether or not there's hysterics on the side of the IDW or whatever that they over blow it. Yeah, and I think that it is a problem.

[00:03:45] And I think that there is there's a great deal of hysterics on both sides of this issue. And what I don't like is people not not not calling crazy when it's crazy. Like you and I were talking about the taking down of movies from like Netflix or HBO.

[00:04:07] I don't like that. I don't like I think it's stupid. And I think I think that as much as you might so I'll let you talk now it creeps into these areas of complete.

[00:04:18] I think hysteria where where I think it shouldn't and sometimes it is about cancelling people's lives in a way that I don't think they should be canceled. They should be called out, but I don't know what do you think?

[00:04:30] I mean it's very hard to talk about because I totally agree like in the individual cases that are real. Like there are those cases and I think those are bad and I don't like taking down gone with the wind.

[00:04:42] And I don't like putting it back with a prologue telling you how to think about gone with the wind like people are children. I didn't know that. Yeah, they did that. Like I don't like I don't like any of that at the same time.

[00:04:54] I think that over blowing the threat of that is like I is also a problem and a big problem.

[00:05:03] It is and it feeds it totally feeds into the fact that a lot of people are now preemptively trying to fight against getting canceled because they believe that it might. Exactly.

[00:05:14] It's not a loop of things and it also makes people scared like it makes academics say like absurd things like I'm terrified to speak in front of my liberal students for fear of offending somebody and get cancelling getting canceled even though.

[00:05:28] And where is Steven Pinker stats when it comes to the possibility of that happening to an academic in the United States, even though it's vanishingly small.

[00:05:38] The fact that it's all a certain segment of media talks about is I think a big problem that also deserves to be criticized. But I totally agree with you that I hate that shit.

[00:05:51] A lot of the woke stuff a lot of the things and not only that we've said this it's not like we haven't said this it's not like we didn't defend.

[00:05:58] The Dave Chappelle special sound like we haven't said some things that are supposed that supposedly should have gotten us canceled and fired about Louis C. It's not like we like all the like we've said all this stuff.

[00:06:08] And actually the reason I sent that opening question is because my stepmother sent me that text like alright now you're going to be convinced because David Brooks tweeted something by Yasha Monk. Can I just say something about Yasha Monk that just occurred to me?

[00:06:23] There is a little bit of a Mandela effect going on with Yasha Monk. Like I think people talk about him like he has been part of our reality for the last 10 years.

[00:06:33] And I think if you are from the universe, maybe that you and I are from either like you, you've never heard of him or I've just started hearing about him all of a sudden. So you know that's not that's you don't hear people talk about that.

[00:06:49] Yeah, I swear to God. I've never I've never heard his name at all. I mean, I'm not I'm not a standard of knowledge about goings on in the in the world of the Atlantic elite liberal East Coast. Right. You Cornell. Yeah.

[00:07:07] Yeah, I think, you know, there is a difference between how many people have actually gotten canceled as a metric of the so called epidemic of cancel culture and of how much those people getting canceled has affected the discourse.

[00:07:27] And I think that that that second thing, the amount that cancel culture has actually effect those cancellations have actually affected people's psychology. That's probably the thing we were pushing against because we didn't want that to be true. We don't want people to live in fear of being canceled.

[00:07:47] And part of not feeding into it is for like the big, big media companies. It would be nice to see maybe a little more backbone from some of the people who actually have power.

[00:07:58] You know, nobody has any stomach for if somebody if just like a few people on Twitter say take down that episode of community, they'll just do it. You know, yeah, because of like it's not it's not doesn't hurt their bottom line. So they took one of the services.

[00:08:12] I don't remember which one took down the it might have been Netflix took down. The episode of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia where they remake or they make lethal weapon five and they totally do blackface. That was when you joined the intellectual dark web.

[00:08:31] Yeah, well, you know what it made me do just go to Hulu and watch that episode again. It's a very funny episode.

[00:08:40] And in that case, I think there are actually those those it's always sunny people are making or using that to to comment on race in a way that I think is actually intelligent. It's in the guise of stupid jokes. And that's what I hope doesn't doesn't stop happening.

[00:09:00] You know, what are they going to say like roots don't show roots because it depicts slavery and that's disrespectful for you know, it's like. At some point I'm like, but it won't because like this has happened before.

[00:09:09] It's not like this is the first time this has happened and like there's a little flare up and then people kind of because it's not fun to be constantly worried about offending the most offendable person in your audience. It's not good for art.

[00:09:23] It's not good for just a productive environment, a learning environment. It's just not good for anybody. And the vast majority of people realize that. And so like, yeah, I'm not pessimistic about that, but then I'm not that pessimistic person, even though the world it's giving me every reason.

[00:09:39] All right. So I don't know that that we have enough time left to discuss the specific thing we were going to discuss for this segment, but it was very related. And that is the my little pony controversy. Tamler, did you know about this? I didn't.

[00:09:55] And so I saw this headline. I tweeted it. My little ponies fans are ready to admit they have a Nazi problem. And like it's such a bizarre headline if you don't know any context or anything about like, you know, how that headline could possibly be real.

[00:10:16] So the first thing you have to know, which is just that a lot of adults and guys love my little pony and have like there's a whole subculture of posting about it.

[00:10:27] And because I'm not like that, like not with my little pony specifically, but just with like kids shows. Like I had no idea that anybody watched or talked about my little pony who wasn't three. I had a vague knowledge. That this existed, this subculture that existed.

[00:10:47] The subculture existed. And I think it was from a parody of it in Bob's Burgers episode where there is very much a middle age white guy subculture of what it's not called my little pony. But I thought it was completely made up. I haven't seen that.

[00:11:04] I like Bob's Burgers. I'm new to it. But I really like it. Yeah. So apparently there are these men who are referred to as bronies. So hard and take this seriously. I guess that's this irony. And again, this is not something I can relate to.

[00:11:23] So I feel like you can though. Can you explain this a little more? I mean, I think that, you know, I have a love for 80s cartoons. I was brought up with it. I can see this weird.

[00:11:35] It's not the kind of ironic liking that I'm like, I don't like that level of irony. And I can see people taking it up, which you know, it's they started just because the internet can collect people. Can unite people of these like very, very weird subcultures.

[00:11:53] It probably grew that way with with people just expressing a fondness, nostalgic fondness for this shit.

[00:12:02] I, you know, I don't get my little pony specifically, but I get, you know, I would I am the kind of person who would wear a Care Bears T-shirt because of the funniness of having grown up with a Care Bears, you know, loving cartoons in my life or whatever.

[00:12:17] So I can relate to getting really into a kids show when I'm watching it with like my four or five year old daughter, you know, like I would do that all the time.

[00:12:26] I was like, I knew like word girls by heart or but I would watch all that shit and like it. But I would never post about it. No, these are childless people. These are not fathers. Exactly. I think that there's nobody here who has children, right?

[00:12:43] And if they do, they the children should be taken away from them. Anyway, so so the whole thing about this is apparently there is a very strong subculture within that subculture that is white supremacist. Yeah, like almost mostly them, right?

[00:13:04] I know what no I got a sense from the article that they are that the so derpy buru is the name of the community online community. It's so hard.

[00:13:15] And the article at least made it sound that the vast majority of things are just like, you know, like cute, like life affirming kinds of memes and pictures that are that are posted. It's just that there also is this complete Nazi segment of it.

[00:13:35] And I think the so the article is I think is is motivated by the fact that derpy buru finally said like, hey, no, no explicit white supremacy content in the art should exist. And that's like when they were ready to admit that they had the Nazi problem.

[00:13:51] But my thought is and perhaps maybe this is wrong. So just yes, I am my expert knowledge of if you're a grown man that is participating in this. Culture you're probably like have Nazi sympathy at least like you. I, you know, I don't know.

[00:14:16] I didn't get that sense from here. But it's well, there is something that there is a line in it, which is what's clearest from talking with those on either side of the argument is that the my little pony fan.

[00:14:34] The Black Lives Matter has developed a totally nonsensical hodgepodge of values. Many fans who specifically support Black Lives Matter, for example, are also fans of Ariane or Ariane Ariane, a fan invented Nazi pony with a pink swastika on her hip. They do not acknowledge the contradiction.

[00:14:54] I love Ariane, a 25 year old, my little pony fan named Sam told me it's just cute funny sexy art. Black Lives Matter art is great. I welcome it too.

[00:15:04] So like, you know, but I'm saying that you like you are at least drawn to it even if you ultimately reject like the National Socialist. It is a well first of all, the most distressing part of that whole quote is that it's sexy.

[00:15:28] That that that a my little pony is is sexy at all. It reveals something about who these guys are not that it's a Nazi my little pony, but just that it's not that it's just that it's that it's a pony. Yeah.

[00:15:42] Yeah, it does seem as if they're very tolerant group, almost heterodox, heterodox, if you would. Yes, John height probably champion. No, no, John. No, sorry, John.

[00:15:57] I thought that this actually would be I was like, oh, this might not be fun because it's going to be like a conversation actually about free speech or whatever.

[00:16:07] But it's so hard to get past the fact that it's a my little pony website that I underestimated what it's saying out loud saying that out loud. The least surprising thing of it to me was that they were then not like.

[00:16:25] Well, some of them posted I can't breathe flags. But those must be the black ones got down. Thanks to hell.

[00:16:33] So I think so I think the thrust of the article is that they ended up instituting some rules against this but not like outright banning white supremacy and that's made everybody kind of upset because they're banning some people but not all and it's like well fucking pick a side, which I get.

[00:16:54] It seems half. There's a great quote on this to dirt derp, the barous tiny policy change has led to an uproar in the site's forums and disgruntled users insist that it will lead to a quote purity spiral or a slippery slope to quote censorship and authoritarianism.

[00:17:13] This site message board or whatever it is on my little pony is a slippery slope to authority. I'm surprised my stepmother hasn't tweeted about this maybe she has. I mean she was even if she didn't tweet, I'm sure she was outraged. But but there's a swastika pony.

[00:17:32] I don't think she's allowed to defend that at all. Oh, I get what you're saying. I get the code. Dave's anti-Semitism has become dog whistling now. I'm just I'm just saying your stepmom is not anti-Semitic.

[00:17:47] She is very I think I texted to you that this this episode we should talk about something far less controversial than IDW and talk about Israel Palestine. But no, we're good.

[00:18:01] So I think there's an interesting question here about, you know, whether or not what the responsibility of this message board is.

[00:18:09] And I kind of respect so they make an illusion to for explicit reference to 4chan, which is, you know, in some ways the armpit of the internet that it's wild while West anything can get posted and it's completely anonymous.

[00:18:25] I'm this might be unpopular thing to say, but I I'm okay with that existing. If they're not breaking laws, if they're like if there's no like child porn, you know, it's snuff snuff porn shit like that.

[00:18:37] Like I like that there are places that allow anything to be posted. I don't like the things that are posted for Chan. I would never even visit most of those boards, but most know listeners. Most.

[00:18:55] But there is something about like this community has to police itself and it's clear that they don't know what to do, right? And I don't know if I were the owner of these this derpy buru, I probably would say get the fuck out Nazis.

[00:19:12] Like if it were my house and you came and saying that shit, I would say get the fuck out. I don't want a racist here.

[00:19:17] And that to me is it's really hard because you either I think have to say, look, nothing, you know, it's like like MMA, like it's going to be no holds barred.

[00:19:30] But then they had to be like, okay, no, I gouging your right, like no biting, like add some rules within reason and then just let it be kind of a free for all.

[00:19:40] Or you say there are values in this community and we're going to have a very involved moderation system and and no none of that shit. Or just figure out a way to spend your time that doesn't involve posting about little ponies.

[00:19:57] I bet you that there is a whole thread dedicated to brush and come out of the main of your my little pony.

[00:20:10] I don't know what would you do if you were the if I mean it's like ask me what what would I do if I was like what color pants would you wear if you were a leprechaun. Right, it's just never gonna happen.

[00:20:22] I would never be in that but like I like me as a person it wouldn't be me anymore that was like moderating any any like site. I would never moderate like site. This is like your reaction to the veil of ignorance.

[00:20:37] You're just like, like look, it's a meaningless question because it would cease to be you having that opinion.

[00:20:42] I wouldn't moderate like the Twin Peaks Reddit page which I love and but just the idea that you're a moderator and you have to put up with all the people bitching at you all the time like I'm impressed with them.

[00:20:55] Okay, save that it is a so so if you're in education, you know that there are these websites called like Blackboard and Canvas where students can post their assignments.

[00:21:05] And often there is an ability to for them to post to each other and have a discussion about each other's points. Something I think is often done in like a philosophy seminar and some of them were saying some racist shit. What would you do?

[00:21:22] It would depend on the thing like and it depends on like in what sense it was racist or in what sense like and what the dynamic of the class was. I'm a particularist when it comes to this.

[00:21:32] Like there are certain classes where there people can have very honest conversations because everybody knows each other and everybody is on board like in that kind of situation that can work in other kinds of situations that doesn't like but this is a context that I don't get so I would just say everyone go home.

[00:21:52] I'm shutting down the site and I'm going to move on with my life. Yeah, maybe so but you know this respecting the diversity of opinion includes the My Little Pony fetish sites.

[00:22:07] And I think that what you pointed out to to particularism about this like which means that you can't possibly expect there to be a broad principle that applies and that you treat each case by case balancing the pros and the cons morally.

[00:22:20] That is that is the dilemma of the Internet because there isn't enough energy to be a particularist.

[00:22:27] You have to institute these blanket kinds of principle driven policies or else it would just take way too long and you know I don't know but I think that it's not hard to just say no racist shit on my.

[00:22:42] The dilemma of the Internet it's the dilemma of like the law and just running a company I think it is like maybe like the fundamental dilemma of modern life. The human condition. Yeah, I mean especially in modern life where there's just so much coming at people that.

[00:23:00] Yeah, we lived in a small scale society and somebody told me that they were drawing a lynching thing. I just slapped the shit out of them and told me to stop. Anything else about my little pony.

[00:23:14] If any of our listeners are a member of this community and we offended you in any way I deeply apologize please don't complain. I do too because you're probably a violent Nazi.

[00:23:29] All right, we will be right back to talk about something I think it's healthy to geek out on. Borges. This episode of very bad wizards is brought to you by better help.

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[00:25:42] We'd like to thank Better Help for sponsoring this episode of Very Bad Wizards. Welcome back to Very Bad Wizards. At this time in the podcast, we'd like to thank all the people who interact with us, reach out to us in all the different ways that you do.

[00:26:55] We've had a lot of interaction after our last episode and especially the first segment. I hope people listened to our discussion on Amiya Srinivasan's essay because I think that was actually a good discussion of two really good articles. But yeah, we appreciate it. It's whirlwind sometimes.

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[00:28:41] We really, really appreciate all our Patreon supporters and we're doing things to hopefully make it pay off for you. What do we have upcoming? We're definitely going to do a dark discussion, right?

[00:28:55] Yes. I am six episodes into the new season which I love. I absolutely love and I'm excited to talk about it. Absolutely. I love it too. I'm five episodes in. We're probably going to have to do it as soon as we finish watching, which we're binging right now.

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[00:29:32] Who to thank that ripping on designers would get us a cool new design for our t-shirt. We actually do. So Olga Pope, who we mentioned last time, who made artwork for us after that episode, was generous and kind enough to pass along that artwork.

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[00:30:17] I've put a link directly to our Cotton Bureau page. So we were using a new service, which I'm very excited about because the quality of their t-shirts is great and they don't accept all designs.

[00:30:29] So in fact, our old very bad wizards t-shirt I wanted it to be on Cotton Bureau because I love their t-shirts but they rejected it.

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[00:31:27] Last thing, Tamler and I mentioned last time that we are doing a miniseries, if you can call that for podcasts, on the Brothers Karamazov. This will be on a service called Lyceum and we are... Himalaya.

[00:31:43] Himalaya. I don't know what to do about that because the service will still be Lyceum. Lyceum and Himalaya, it's a company that puts out content, just custom content by creators. We're really excited about it.

[00:31:58] We're going to do five episodes on the Brothers Karamazov and we are going to release the first episode for everybody as a part of the regular Very Bad Wizards podcast.

[00:32:09] And in fact, if you're a Patreon supporter at $5 and above, you will get access to that miniseries for free as well. You get a special code. One of our listeners asked us to say which translation we're using.

[00:32:23] So, we can say that now we're going to be reading the translation by Richard Pevier, P-E-V-E-A-R and Larissa Volokonsky. So, if you care enough to follow the exact words that we're reading, you can get that. I'll put a link to that to the Amazon page for that.

[00:32:43] Yeah, I'm excited about it. For people who want to follow along with us, our plan is to do it one episode on each part and then the final episode on the epilogue and the whole book.

[00:32:55] So, if you want to just sort of read along with us and then listen to our podcast as we are discussing just that part. And I think we're not going to read ahead when we discuss it.

[00:33:09] So, it'll be like even though both of us have read it before, I don't have a great memory of all the aspects of it. So, it'll be like we're all reading it for the first time. So, I'm very excited about that and I hope you guys are too.

[00:33:22] It will cost a little money but not just it'll just be $5 for the whole series. Yeah, as you said that we've read it before but we have very little memory for it. In fact, I am trying to recreate the entire book myself.

[00:33:37] That gets us into the foray section but let's wrap up and say thank you everybody for all of your support. We really appreciate it. Thank you, we're very grateful. So now let's turn to something a lot of people have asked us to do more of.

[00:33:51] Short stories by Jorge Luis Borges. And the story that we're going to talk about today is called Pierre Menard, author of Quixote. It was first published in 1939. It is definitely the funniest of Borges' stories that we've read by a wide margin.

[00:34:13] It's a hilarious story and I think that is something that seems to get overlooked because of the various movements in postmodernism and philosophy of art that have been inspired by it.

[00:34:25] The narrator is kind of an insufferably pompous, literary critic maybe or admirer of a fictional French writer, poet, philosopher Pierre Menard.

[00:34:38] The narrator refers to Pierre Menard in the opening sentence as a novelist although when you look at his list of published works it doesn't seem to include any novels.

[00:34:48] But according to the narrator he did embark on one novel but he only finished two chapters and destroyed them before his death. The novel he was working on was Don Quixote, not an updated version of Cervantes Don Quixote but a word by word recreation of Cervantes' novel.

[00:35:10] He was actually trying to write the same text. The narrator describes this project in glowing terms and considers the three chapters of Menard's Don Quixote to be infinitely richer than the original.

[00:35:26] From a brief survey of some secondary literature it seems like almost everyone focuses on the philosophy and literary criticism aspects of this fictional project. But it is first and foremost a short story.

[00:35:39] Dave, what did you think of this? And I'm going to say it. I'm going to use a term I hate. But what did you think of it, Quoi, short story? Quoi, Tamler. I never thought- I can't believe I just said Quoi.

[00:35:55] I never thought in all the years of podcasting that you would actually stoop to saying Quoi. I mean, I loved it as a story and there's no real plot to it other than the aspect that the narrator is saying.

[00:36:12] Pierre Menard died and this person had the gall of publishing what they called his complete bibliography of works and not including his masterpiece.

[00:36:24] And that structure, that of defending Pierre Menard from this posthumous attack, I think adds richness to just the mere facts that the narrator goes on to explain.

[00:36:40] Because he's saying it with this tone of defending what a wonderful work it was. You know, he's defending his friend who's dead. Even though he destroyed it and there's no evidence of its existence beyond this testimony from this narrator.

[00:36:56] Right. Is the final copy destroyed or is it just all of the copies that led up to it? No, I think everything is destroyed. Like we have to take his word for it that he was even doing this in a serious way.

[00:37:11] I guess he quotes letters from Pierre Menard that talked about it. Well, what's hilarious is that he might actually just say, well, of course it exists. Just pick up a copy of Don Quixote. Well, yeah, we should talk about that. Can we read the opening paragraph?

[00:37:32] Yeah, I was going to say he calls it a palimpset in which there should appear traces of the previous handwriting. So I assume that he had in his possession when he went through his stuff that there was a final version.

[00:37:44] I want to read the opening paragraph because to me it screams unreliable narrator from the start. The visible oeuvre left by this novelist, again he's calling him a novelist, can be easily and briefly enumerated. Unpardonable therefore are the omissions and additions perpetrated by Madame Henri Bachelier

[00:38:07] in a deceitful catalog that a certain newspaper whose Protestant leanings are surely no secret has been so inconsiderate as to inflict upon that newspaper's deplorable readers, few and Calvinist if not Masonic and circumcised though they may be.

[00:38:23] So he's just criticizing this newspaper and this like wrote obituary or something that this woman did about this writer. Not a novelist because he never wrote any novels.

[00:38:37] Menard's true friends have greeted that catalog with alarm and even with a degree of sadness, one might note that only yesterday where we gathered before his marmoral place of rest among the dreary Cypresses and already error capital E is attempting to tarnish his bright memory of capital M.

[00:38:53] Most decidedly a brief rectification is imperative. So first of all like just the pomposity of this guy and the way he describes the newspaper's readers, few and Calvinist if not Masonic and circumcised. He's Mason's Protestants and Jews. Yeah, exactly. He's putting the Catholic flag down. Because he's French.

[00:39:17] He's from the south of France. So I don't know like I read that and I think unreliable narrator. This reminded me from the get go of Nabokov's pale fire and the unreliable narrator or actually like commentator. That's part of that novel.

[00:39:34] And so like I think you have to take everything that follows here with a grain of salt and how you take it with a grain of salt is a really interesting question.

[00:39:45] But one thing that like I noticed in the secondary literature, at least I took a look at is they barely do that. They barely acknowledge that this isn't just Borges writing it, you know, as if he's the narrator. Right. Well, let's talk.

[00:40:01] Can we talk a little bit about why are you so convinced that this paragraph sets him up as an unreliable narrator? He's certainly emotional and upset. But why unreliable?

[00:40:11] So if you combine this within the list that he says that the narrator says are his body of work, Menard's body of work. You see first of all that there's no novels in there and he calls him a novelist.

[00:40:26] I see. So I took him calling him a novelist as when you include the Quixote in there. That's why he's a novelist. So that is part of the claim that my friend was a novelist.

[00:40:38] But that's the unreliable aspect of it because even if he did what the narrator says he did, it was two, three fragments of a chapter of a book that's already been a novel that's already been written that he never published.

[00:40:56] So calling him a novelist, he clearly has an agenda here. Right. And he's also, you know, what he says about the readers and just his style, which is throughout the story, right?

[00:41:10] Like you could take it as a gentle satire of like a literary admirer or something like that, a literary friend. But yeah, I'll table that until we get to some of the funnier passages that we get to when he actually comments on the project. Right.

[00:41:28] And just to say, I don't disagree that he's a completely unreliable narrator. I just think that that became clear to me as I read it, not necessarily like I took it that he was just trying to big up his friend as a novelist.

[00:41:41] And when you look through his list of published works, it feels like satire. It feels like satire that the author or the narrator isn't aware is satire.

[00:41:56] When he's one of his works is a technical article on the possibility of enriching the game of chess by eliminating one of the rook's pawns. Menard proposes, recommends debates and then finally rejects this innovation. I love that.

[00:42:13] That's that was the part where I think I texted you like this shit is funny. That is the most useless kind of author of authorship that you could imagine. He recommends it and then rejects it. And then reject, but then reject. And that's a theme, right?

[00:42:29] Like he also has a diatribe against Paul Valerie in Jacques Reboult's foi pour la suppression de la réalité, which diatribe I might add parenthetically states the exact reverse of Menard's true opinion of Valerie. Valerie understood this and the two men's friendship was never in parallel.

[00:42:47] And I suppose he could have been like this, but just the idea that this, you know, the way he's describing his brilliance and his particular genius just strikes me more like a sick, a fan who misunderstood the person he loves than somebody who's accurately describing them.

[00:43:09] It's interesting because he goes into such detail about what he says are the works of his friend and it includes things that are obviously never, never published. So it's like I don't know how he's coming up with this list. And I don't know why.

[00:43:33] Well, he says this is the complete list. This is the true complete list. Well, yeah, that's visible. And maybe the woman who in the Calvinist Masonic Jew newspaper, maybe she didn't even include all of these. Right. But then right.

[00:43:51] And then it's a lead end to but there's something that you don't even know that he did, which is his masterpiece, his Don Quixote. And we will talk about all the philosophical and literary kind of implications of that project.

[00:44:05] But I think it has to be understood in the backdrop of this guy who's just, I don't know. He's a bullshitter. He's a bullshitter like he sounds like a bullshitter without necessarily knowing that he's a bullshitter. Like he might believe this stuff.

[00:44:20] He might be taken in by his own bullshit. But it but it reads like that to me also though in support of your work. And I think that's your point of maybe the narrator having been taken in perhaps by the bullshit of Pierre Menard.

[00:44:39] The first footnote and yours, you're my translation is different was always the first footnote is at the end of that list and he says Madame Henri Bachelier also lists a literal translation of a literal translation done by Kevello of the introduction

[00:44:56] of Saint Francis of Sales in Pierre Menard's library. There are no such there are no traces of such a work. She must have misunderstood a remark of his which he had intended as a joke and that is like well right maybe you did.

[00:45:11] That's what I think is like there might be a Pierre Menard who actually was like a real thinker and poet and philosopher, but like he didn't understand what he was doing and may have taken this whole idea

[00:45:25] of rewriting Don Quixote, which his friend or this author said as a joke he may have thought.

[00:45:35] I kind of now in the context of what you were saying and that footnote I think that what he's saying is most likely what Borges is saying about this narrator is probably Pierre Menard told you this story about how he's doing the Quixote as a joke.

[00:45:51] And now you've taken it as a work of genius, right? So I think we mentioned right he is going to rewrite word for word Don Quixote by Cervantes. Yeah. A great book have you read that by the way?

[00:46:04] Hell no I tried to read it in Spanish which was my mistake and then never read it because I thought like out of pride that I should read it in Spanish Right. Because I can like how could you know it's like reading Shakespeare in German or something.

[00:46:18] It also it's great. It's also very funny and it also has meta fictional aspects to it like the whole part two comments on the fact that part one was found and published and so I think it's a really good text for Borges to use for something like this.

[00:46:37] Yeah, for like I'm sure many of our listeners are actually much more well read than I am but for anybody who doesn't know Don Quixote is to the Spanish world.

[00:46:50] The most important book that it is as if William Shakespeare had published one major play that was very, very long. And and we elevated that single work as the forefather of all literature to follow.

[00:47:07] That's how much Cervantes is so this is a context of saying like this guy is claiming that he rewrote the most important book of in Spanish historically. Not only that, he seems to have thought very little of the work compared to everybody else.

[00:47:26] He was kind of indifferent to it. Now he only said that he wrote three chapters though not the whole. Two and a half right two complete chapters in half of one. Yeah, which is a great. That's just a great detail.

[00:47:38] I love it. I love that that's that that's in there because as Menard himself says you would have to be immortal to have completed it.

[00:47:47] And it's not that Menard was copying it word for word he wasn't doing that but it's also not that he hadn't read it he had and actually we should read it.

[00:47:55] There's a funny paragraph about the first but he says those who have insinuated that Menard devoted his life to writing a contemporary key. Okay, besmirch his illustrious memory. Pierre Menard did not want to compose another key. Okay, which is surely easy enough. He wanted to compose the key.

[00:48:14] Okay, nor surely need one be obliged to note that his goal was never a mechanical transcription of the original. He had no intention of copying it.

[00:48:23] His admirable ambition was to produce a number of pages which coincided word for word and line for line with those of Miguel de Cervantes. I love it. I just love it. This is this brings me joy for some reason that this premise that you could he's not copying.

[00:48:41] No, and he's not. He goes on to say he's not doing that bullshit thing of like making or he said this before of making like a new key. Like in modern times, like people tend to do like he's not making 1920s Paris.

[00:48:55] Yeah, he's not making Christ on a boulevard Hamlet on the Canterbury and don't get down Wall Street. That would be plebeian and and below him. He is going about rewriting as if it were as if it emanated from him the key hot there.

[00:49:13] And so then he goes on to say like how did he do this? Well, he first thought to do it by just reliving the life of Cervantes.

[00:49:23] So he says the initial method he conceived was relatively simple to know Spanish well to reembrace the Catholic faith to fight against moors and Turks to forget European history. Between 1602 and 1918 and to be Miguel de Cervantes, but he he rejects this as too easy.

[00:49:42] And now he's French, right? He doesn't know Spanish. So in my translation, he says learn Spanish and in that the Spanish of Cervantes is in meant like the original Spanish is pretty like pretty incomprehensible to even span or modern Spanish speakers.

[00:49:58] It's it's more similar to Portuguese in many ways than than it is even to Spanish. So so he tried that like the way that would be obvious, which is let me become key hot and write this as key hot.

[00:50:12] I mean, as Cervantes, let me become Cervantes and write it as Cervantes, but he doesn't do that. In fact, the method that he chooses is a little nebulous.

[00:50:20] Yeah, he said he said being somehow Cervantes and arriving thereby at the key hoodie that looked to Menard less challenging and therefore less interesting than continuing to be Pierre Menard. And coming to the key hot through the experiences of Pierre Menard. Yeah, let's unpack that. Right.

[00:50:41] So so so because of that, there's one part of the book that he couldn't write, which is the part of the autobiographical prologue of the second part of Don Quixote, because then he would have to write it as Cervantes and he wasn't trying to be Cervantes.

[00:50:55] So that part was was not available to him to his to his undertaking. And again, that part, if I'm remembering right is also kind of metafictional. It's it's Cervantes playing the role of Cervantes, not like real Cervantes. So but he couldn't do that because he's not Cervantes. Yeah.

[00:51:22] So he said I my undertaking is not essentially difficult. I read in another part of the same letter that the narrator is telling us quoting the letter. I would only have to be immortal in order to carry out again the most pompous.

[00:51:35] The Pierre Menard sounded like he was either so full of himself or just really pulling the leg of the narrator.

[00:51:45] Right, you could see him having that these friends these other like French pretentious fucks and like playing a practical joke on this sycophantic like admirer that this is what he was going to do.

[00:51:58] And like the practical joke now outlives him, you know, because he the guy produces this this piece where he took it. Beautiful entirely seriously.

[00:52:07] But then they would be in he would be in good company with I think a lot of people like Roland Roland bought the postmodernist called this a postmodernist manifesto this story. Oh really? Yeah. Yeah.

[00:52:22] So I think a lot of people have taken Borges seriously and I'm not saying it doesn't raise a lot of the interesting philosophical questions that they say it raises, but it's definitely not a manifesto.

[00:52:37] It's not arguing for a specific view of how you should read text or write text or interpret text or anything like that. Right.

[00:52:46] Now I'm I'm certainly no no expert to say this but I would put money on that these people got taken in the way that the narrator got taken in by pure monarch. Right. Exactly.

[00:52:58] So let's talk about like let's take it at face value just for the sake of talking about it and think what does that mean to write Don Quixote as somebody who lives like 300 years later. And a totally different country in a totally different language without copying. Right.

[00:53:21] And to come at it genuinely I think that way there's kind of absurdity to it. It's not realistically possible to do that without just copying it. But what does it like what is it alluding to even the the idea of it?

[00:53:39] The the production again the emanation of a work in a completely different context. So his method he says is even harder than what Quixote had to do because for Quixote he could just I mean God damn it.

[00:53:55] Cervantes for him Cervantes just sort of was could stumble through and work. So he says a little at the devil kind of half acidly produce the entire work emanating from him.

[00:54:09] But for Menard he has to do something entirely different which is be Menard be in this context in this time period and this person and have it come out of him. And that on the face of it to me sounds obvious like impossible. So I don't know.

[00:54:26] I don't know what what it means. He says this is a letter that is supposedly from Menard to the narrator. This game of solitary I play is governed by two polar rules.

[00:54:37] The first allows me to try out formal or psychological variants of I take it the original text. The second forces me to sacrifice them to the quote unquote original text and to come by irrefutable arguments to those eradications.

[00:54:55] Again if we take this at face value he is saying that you know as a French person living in the south of France in the 30s and 20s or whenever this is supposed to have taken place.

[00:55:09] I first try out like how would I write the text but then I have to necessarily through irrefutable arguments come to eradicate those psychological variants of Don Quixote and to come back to the original.

[00:55:27] It's like he's giving himself some sort of I don't know a test of his logical and lexical kind of capacities so that it just is it comes out of him necessarily as this is the text that he's writing that happens to also be the exact replica of

[00:55:50] Romney's text. And the trippy thing is that you know he specifies that he must have read Don Quixote when he was a kid. I mean he did but he's forgotten it and he didn't go back and read it in order to do this.

[00:56:06] Yeah he said since then I have read re-read several chapters attentively but not the ones I am going to undertake so he on purpose did not read the chapters that he was going to try to read.

[00:56:20] He did not read the chapters that he was going to recreate but he studied all of the other things I've likewise studied the entremeses the comedies the Galatea the exemplary novels and the undoubtedly laborious efforts of

[00:56:31] Percites and Sigismund and the Viaje al Parnaso so he read all of the other stuff like that that Cervantes wrote in order to sort of get be able to get in his mind but not the chapters that that he's describing of writing something and then scratching it.

[00:56:52] It's it's crazy because he's it's not like he's checking the accuracy against something and then scratching it out right he has no idea how does he know that their formal and psychological variance right right he doesn't

[00:57:07] So this is again like unreliable narrator aspect of this I think comes out maybe there as well it's not possible even in the letter of him describing it so either he is a lunatic or

[00:57:23] Right so Menard being the unreliable one in this case is that what you're saying? Yeah but unreliable to the point of being unreliable in the head you know like if what he says is true it doesn't seem consist.

[00:57:36] Conceptual yeah it's no way but you could do that like what are you gonna and so they describe he describes the narrator describes what does he say hundreds if not thousands I think of drafts that he had to go through before getting to

[00:57:51] the final you know chapter 36 or whatever. But just by the way none of them exist like you destroyed them all.

[00:58:01] Exactly so he says my purpose is merely astonishing he wrote me on September 30th 1934 from by on the final term of a theological or metaphysical proof the world around us or God or chance or universal forms is no more

[00:58:17] final no more uncommon than my revealed novel the sole difference is that philosophers published pleasant volumes containing the intermediate stages of their work while I am resolved to suppress those stages of my of my own and indeed there is

[00:58:32] not a single draft to bear witness to that years long labor. So he's saying that he's comparing it to like a final like arriving at the forums or a metaphysical truth of the necessity of God.

[00:58:48] There is something about like the necessary that is occupying him about this the fact that this could issue from him almost like a like a logical in France or some sort of proof it's it's almost like a proof the way he he he

[00:59:03] he's he's conceiving of it again according to the narrator stop saying we always have to keep that in mind.

[00:59:10] I couldn't help but think of the culture of sampling which we can get to about this but there are people who recreate entire beats in hip hop they go to the original sample and they try to get their original drums and they recreate the entire thing.

[00:59:28] Is it their beat. I don't know. Well this is the thing that has fired up in the philosophy of art the metaphysics of art and stuff like that.

[00:59:35] But there is a kind of interesting question that I think or has wants us to ask that is raised by this and again it's presented still in this satirical way but it's this idea of if you read it in the context of this being serve on day who wrote it or you read it in the context of it being

[00:59:54] the manard who who who wrote it you will you may interpret it differently and you may find one to be more interesting or raise a whole new set of questions or themes.

[01:00:07] Yeah this is clearly the central interesting aspect of this where when he is considering the chapters he says the text of serbantes and that of menard are verbally identical.

[01:00:21] But the second is almost infinitely richer more ambiguous his detractors will say but ambiguity is a richness so he's already imagining that the detractors are like reading reading menards version but of course they're identical.

[01:00:35] So he says in spite of these three obstacles when he's talking about the obstacles to having written the key hot in spite of these three obstacles the fragmentary don't give them an art is more subtle than that of serbantes.

[01:00:48] The latter the latter indulges in a rather coarse opposition between tales of knighthood and the meager provincial reality of his country.

[01:00:56] Menard chooses as reality the land of Carmen during the century of Lopanto and Lopez so he's just saying like the same decisions that serbantes made for his story are completely different decisions and more brilliant ones that that menard made for his story.

[01:01:14] So Vantes is just talking like comparing like norms of chivalry in his own time pretty much or in a previous like just previous to when he lived and whereas this French author in the 20th century is doing that. What burlesque brushstrokes of local color.

[01:01:32] This is such a postmodernist wet dream. Yeah. Like this is of course of course they love this. He says it is a matter of common knowledge that in in that chapter chapter 38 Don Quixote comes down against letters against like literature in favor of arms.

[01:01:49] Cervantes was an old soldier for him from him the verdict is understandable but that Pierre Menard's Don Quixote a contemporary of La traison des clairs and Bertrand Russell should repeat these cloudy softestries.

[01:02:03] The complex context and psychology in which Menard produces this is what needs to be understood when you read a sentence like him him favoring arms over letters.

[01:02:15] But it is an interesting question right it is different like setting aside the the you know the grandiosity of the pros in this like it you know it is different to read this if a French person wrote it in the in the 30s

[01:02:31] the 1930s then it would be to know that Cervantes wrote it in whatever the 17th century so like it absolutely is like I'm I'm I'm totally on board with with that idea it's such an interesting way to propose this question right.

[01:02:49] Should we go on to that the money shot. Yeah okay the money shot go. This is so funny.

[01:02:55] Yeah so he continues to say the text of Cervantes and that of Menard are verbally identical but the second is almost infinitely richer more ambiguous his detractors will say but ambiguity is a richness.

[01:03:07] It is a revelation to compare the Don Quixote of Menard with that of Cervantes and then he says should I read it in Spanish. We have to read it in English for non Spanish speaking listeners but right.

[01:03:20] So the latter for instance wrote so he said he's quoting Cervantes is version. La verdad cuya madre es la historia. Imula del tiempo depósito de las acciones testigo de lo pasado ejemplo y aviso de lo presente advertencia de lo porvenir.

[01:03:36] So he write I'm saying in Spanish because he wrote it in Spanish but the translation is truth. Whose mother is history who is the rival of time depository of deeds witness of the past example in lesson to the present and warning to the future.

[01:03:50] He says written in the 17th century written by the ingenious layman Cervantes this enumeration is a mere rhetorical eulogy of history. Menard on the other hand writes and then he just writes the exact same passage which I don't need to read twice.

[01:04:07] And then he says history mother of truth the idea is astounding. Menard a contemporary of William James does not define history as an investigation of reality but as its origin historical truth for him is not what took place it is what we think took place.

[01:04:23] The final clauses example in lesson to the present and warning to the future are shamelessly pragmatic. So he's reading a whole world of philosophy into the exact same phrase the exact same paragraph. And very dismissively.

[01:04:39] The quote unquote ingenious layman Miguel Cervantes it's just a rhetorical praise of history which it clearly isn't. Don Quixote itself is a comic novel right it's a comic text and then but history the mother of truth in my translation the idea is staggering.

[01:05:03] He is a contemporary of William James and I yeah I love the final phrases exemplar and advisor to the president of the future's counselor are brazenly pragmatic. He's discovered his prag the pragmatist philosophical leanings of his friend by reading his text.

[01:05:18] Yeah I mean so it is different to write that passage in the context of you know the the philosophical and literary movements of your time rather than you know 300 years before anybody would talk about like pragmatism as a movement. Right. Absolutely.

[01:05:42] So that's why that's why you know he was he was rejecting the method of trying to become 17th century Cervantes.

[01:05:48] He rather created this was the genius move he recreated the text as Pierre Menard and coming from him those words not only sound different but they probably mean something different. Although they don't mean what he says they mean.

[01:06:06] No no no he's he's engaging in like a like super sycophantic like analysis of the text. There's nothing brazenly prachmatic about saying or history is exemplar and advisor to the president and the future's counselor that he's not taking sides in you know the pragmatist versus realist debate. Right.

[01:06:27] Even if this heat this came out of him for the first time. So it does show a kind of misunderstanding of what novelists are doing I think throughout but I still agree with you that it does mean something different. Right.

[01:06:43] What it means might yeah but to put the meaning what that meaning is in the hands of the narrator is is dangerous and that's the move the move that takes you from saying we have to understand text in its context and we have to derive the meaning

[01:07:00] based on you know what what we think the author's context was gives a subjectivity to any text that now places the ability to interpret it in the hands of the interpreter. Right.

[01:07:13] And he really wants I think the narrator really wants to believe that this is a clear a clear passage that just that is revealing Menard's pragmatism. Like he believes it and he thinks that that is the right interpretation given what he knows of Menard.

[01:07:30] Or he's saying it because he rejects it. And that was a habit of his. So it could be the thing and it's opposite. Yeah, they could be the thing or it's opposite.

[01:07:42] In that sense it's like almost a literal reductive I'd absurd him of like like literary interpretation of this style, you know because you can't ever know whether it's like this or the opposite.

[01:07:56] This raises a ton of interesting questions about how much to take both the author, the author's intentions and at least something I have more sympathy with just to know something about the context in which it was written is going to help determine how you understand the meaning of the text.

[01:08:20] It is funny though that he gives like you said he puts it in the hands of someone who's so ill equipped to do this well, regardless of whether this thing exists.

[01:08:31] One of the funny parts too is when he says that even though Menard only wrote two and a half chapters, it's impossible not to when reading the other chapters, not to hear his style coming through.

[01:08:44] So now he has the ability to reinterpret all of Don Quixote if if what he's doing is reading it in the voice of Pirman Ardor and you know as coming from Pirman Ardor.

[01:08:56] So the question of whether this is a valid way of interpreting text is an interesting one. It's interesting that for instance we say when we discuss something, we don't usually take into account the context that Borges was writing it in. We do a little bit. A little bit.

[01:09:14] Yeah. A little bit, but they usually stand on their own right? We treat the text as texts that we interpret only within the text or at least mostly.

[01:09:25] Yeah and I think partly it's because of the kind of writer he is where I think those texts are meant to. I think the one exception might have been Telon Uqbar. Right. Right.

[01:09:39] I think we certainly brought into it the war and also like the movements of idealism that he might have some opinions on. But I think we respect the text and we respect like the art of literature enough not to impute any specific agenda.

[01:09:57] But like for the brothers Karamazov when we do that, I think it will be hard because the text itself is so situated in some of these Russian movements at the time.

[01:10:08] It will be hard not to just acknowledge that the Dusty F.S.K. is writing in that context and maybe a little bit of his personal biography, maybe not too much. I don't have like a settled view on how much of that to take into account.

[01:10:22] Sometimes I think people do it too much. Sometimes I think people do it too little. Absolutely. And I'm not sure what the narrator actually thinks and what Borges thinks that we should do. But he does take this to its complete conclusion. Right.

[01:10:43] So he says that this method that Menard came up with, so he says Menard perhaps without wishing to has enriched by means of a new technique, the hesitant and rudimentary art of reading. The technique is one of deliberate anachronism and erroneous attribution.

[01:10:59] This technique with its infinite applications urges us to run through the Odyssey as if it were written after the Enid. That he pronounced the Enid. Enid. And to read Le Jardin du Centaire by Madame Henri Bachelier. You like my pretentious pronunciation. Very good.

[01:11:17] This is one of the funniest lines. And to read Le Jardin du Centaire by Madame Henri Bachelier as if it were written by Madame Henri Bachelier. This technique would fill the dullest books with adventure.

[01:11:30] Would not attributing of the imitation of Christ to Louis, Fernand, Celine or James Joyce be a sufficient renovation of its tenuous spiritual councils? I have faint spiritual admonitions. Yeah. Right. But if you assume that one author wrote a different book and you play that game.

[01:11:48] So it doesn't have to be that he actually wrote it. I could just, you know, I could read Crime and Punishment and think what if Tamler Summers actually wrote Crime and Punishment? And that gives me a whole new astonishing. A astonishing. Staggering. Genius.

[01:12:03] That would give me a whole new way of looking at Crime and Punishment and the context in which Tamler Summers was raised would influence every interpretation of that text.

[01:12:13] I think that what Borges is pointing out as he's having the narrator come like go through this conclusion that like, oh, with this new technique, we could read something as if it were written by somebody else. And that unlocks a whole new set of meanings to the text.

[01:12:32] That's a dangerous game to play because once you do that, then. The possibility of reading different meanings into every single text exists and you can almost do what what they were alluding to before is believe the thing and its opposite depending on who you're thinking wrote it.

[01:12:53] And I think much like the library of Babel, this will create infinite sets of meanings and we will never be able to figure out which meaning is the right one. Is that a bad thing when it comes to literature?

[01:13:08] Like is it a bad thing not to know what the authors. Yeah, what the quote unquote real meaning was.

[01:13:14] Yeah, I mean one of the endlessly fascinating things about Plato for me is that we don't actually really know what he believes because they're dialogues and he didn't put himself in any of the dialogues. Those are philosophers.

[01:13:29] Like with literature, I don't want to know what Ursula Le Guin thinks about utilitarianism. They're, you know, the literary art to me is raising questions and giving a kind of a template for us to, I don't know, to think about things not answers or resolutions.

[01:13:52] And so, so I mean, I think it's not a bad thing to not know what the author meant in one sense.

[01:14:01] I on the other hand, I totally agree with you that the way he's talking about it, it would become completely meaningless because you can import anything onto the text, right? Like, right. So like at least there's a constraint.

[01:14:13] There's some constraint and hermeneutical constraint, I guess, when it comes to assuming that the author who wrote it wrote it. And knowing that and knowing the time period maybe that they wrote it. But without that, and just with the ability to imagine that anybody wrote it.

[01:14:31] Yeah, it does become Library of Babelie. That's a good analogy. And the thing is, the narrator of this story that is not coming down on the side that this is bad. He's clearly championing this way of interpreting text. But what's interesting is to me that you can't.

[01:14:52] There's there's a way in which it's impossible to read a text without having some context without bringing something to the table. We are we know something about Ian McEwen. We know something about Tamler Summers when we start reading this and we can't help but bring that to bear.

[01:15:08] We know something about the time period in which it was written and the meaning of words in that time period, right? So we might go look up words that Shakespeare wrote. What did this word mean when Shakespeare wrote it versus what does it mean now?

[01:15:24] We're doing that as part of taking in any text. The question is, how far can you go in changing the truth of the text or truth isn't the right word? But you know what I mean? Yeah.

[01:15:39] How far can you go in terms of the elasticity or flexibility of how you understand? And I think you can go pretty far. I mean, one of the things that I love about teaching the Iliad and the Odyssey every two years is,

[01:15:54] I come at it from a different perspective in my life sometimes. I started doing this like 12 years ago and my daughter was four and I had a whole different set of beliefs and values.

[01:16:07] And it's not maybe not radically different, but you come at it from your own perspective in a different way. And Homer is a really interesting case where we don't know much about the like we don't even know when that text was written within 500 years.

[01:16:20] And we don't know anything about the person, even though these are probably the two great math, you know, two of the five greatest masterpieces of Western literature.

[01:16:30] It's like, but at the same time, you know something if you didn't know if you came at it with no context in the language right? Yeah.

[01:16:41] Yeah, even the language and even if you like it would be very different if you thought it was written in that 18th century or the 20th century versus just knowing that it was written pre right, you know, like oral tradition, definitely before 700 BC, you know,

[01:16:57] this is going back to your particularism. You want to say that for each text we can there are boundaries by which we can interpret, but those boundaries are kind of flexible and depending on the work like if a work of poetry might mean something different

[01:17:13] or take you and I reading Ecclesiastes and Job in our forties, you know, like as this this part of our life.

[01:17:23] We can't help but read into it. I don't think and I don't think that it's possible to consider that things have meaning without the reader reading into it.

[01:17:34] It's just that this this is exactly the part of postmodernism that goes too far if postmodernism is even a thing, but that part where you say well it just right so I resist people saying Huck Finn is a racist book because Huck Finn lives in that time period.

[01:17:55] And it should be judged by the culture of that time period and I don't want to I don't want to impute my values on to that time period.

[01:18:04] I want to be able to read that text without being outraged at it all of the language like the use of the n word. Whereas if a novelist did that right now.

[01:18:14] Yeah, like if a white person had wrote a book where there was just filled with a bunch of n words, you'd be like why are you doing that?

[01:18:20] Like that's not right. But but I resist I want to keep it within the confines of the meaning, you know, surrounding that author in that time period. But where do you stop? I'm not sure. I think it yeah I don't think there is general principles.

[01:18:35] I mean I think one of the things that postmodernist did was they took an extreme stance on it on this. The text is just the text and that's that seems too far for a lot of the reasons that you've said.

[01:18:47] On the other hand, reading too much into it there is a kind of way that I think some religious religious studies people what are they called theologians theologians I guess but yeah, they will come at something like ecclesiasties or Genesis as like power struggles between various try like they will reduce it to some sort of political or yeah

[01:19:13] philosophical message that is trying to be expressed and that to me is antithetical to like what art is is is trying to do. So I probably I probably have more of an aversion to that like the reductive approach than I do to the

[01:19:30] That someone could tell us that we were wrong about ecclesiasties like they would say like no you guys like even though you understood the words what you need to realize that this this person writing it probably was responding to that political movement that was going on I would be like fuck you

[01:19:47] like this person is writing poetry and that poetry is emotional and timeless.

[01:19:52] And again we don't and that's another text where we don't know like we don't have a really good idea when it was written or the context that it would have written in and that's kind of a really interesting aspect of it it's also interesting that like you read it when you were a strong believer and now you're reading it as an atheist and those are two different ways of understanding it.

[01:20:13] Yeah absolutely. You know so so that that's a deeply interesting question we would be out we would be out of a podcast job probably if we adhere to the strictest way of interpreting a text right because we are even in our reading of Borges we're

[01:20:29] reading as much as we possibly were squeezing as much meaning as we possibly can out of it and that means sometimes probably interpreting things in a way that Borges would not have interpreted it.

[01:20:42] But I'm okay with that like I don't like the thought that like I don't like listening to musical artists tell me what their song means. I just don't like it takes something away from it and sometimes I think well no you're just wrong.

[01:21:01] I reserve the right to say that they're wrong about what their song means which I think is totally fair sometimes you know like sometimes I think that postmodernist kind of point that sometimes the author's text is more meaningful than the author might recognize you know and and that it's actually a tribute to the author if they can do that you know and I think that's

[01:21:24] what people are are trying to do. There's a great David Lynch quote that I've probably said on this podcast but closure is just an excuse to forget that you saw the damn thing or read the damn thing or and you know he's somebody very conscious about not giving his interpretation

[01:21:41] or his so that we can do it you know and so that we can take what are you know and it becomes an active process reading and that's a good way of putting it.

[01:21:51] That's it is all all reading is an active process and that's what he the narrator of this is I think trying to champion he says if that's how you approach reading then it becomes this wonderful you know this wonderful

[01:22:09] whatever whereas before you might have read it and been bored by it. Now you read it with this new lens a new way of appreciating it so so it might be fun to just read the Odyssey and think you know what if David Lynch had written it or whatever

[01:22:25] or it was written yeah like his example written after the Aeneid and he's also right that even though I think he says some you know totally unacceptable things about Don Quixote which I love.

[01:22:39] He does say that you know there is a kind of fussiness to the way some people talk about it that drains it of the fun that the text has and as he says the Quixote Menard remarked was first and foremost a pleasant book it is now an occasion for patriotic toasts grammatical arrogance obscene deluxe editions.

[01:23:03] I love that.

[01:23:04] Fame is a form perhaps the worst form of incomprehension. So once a text does become celebrate I think Shakespeare is like this in a lot of ways like if we revere it too much you know if we know what to think about it then it loses a bit of its mystery and its magic and it's life like it's life and it's life yeah it's vitality absolutely.

[01:23:28] You know this is this slightly different point but if you'll allow me this this story made me think of this example in hip hop so there is Jay Dilla is a producer who is dead but was right widely regarded as one of the greatest if not the greatest producer out there he had this amazing ability to do things that even now know people have been able to do.

[01:23:57] And one of the stories about him is that he idolized this producer named Pete Rock and Pete Rock in the early nineties put out an album called Mecca and the Soul Brother was Pete Rock and CL Smooth. And the way that Jay Dilla revered him.

[01:24:15] He thought that it would be good practice for him to remake the entire album all of the beats on that album not the rapping just the beats. So he spent hours and hours, you know in his basement,

[01:24:27] remaking every single beat finding the original samples trying to get the drums to sound exactly right and he finished it and the person he was telling this story to is Questlove from the roots.

[01:24:39] Questlove was like this is incredible you know you should do something with it and he was like no I basically just got rid of it because all he wanted to do is practice and idolize his his favorite producer but this all gets me to this point.

[01:24:56] That set of beats that Jay Dilla produced would to me if somebody could give it to me would make me have a vastly different and incredible experience than if you just gave me the instrumentals of Pete Rocks original.

[01:25:15] Everything that I love about Jay Dilla would somehow be in those notes in a way that they aren't very different way and that thought of reading things with new eyes. That word vitality that you use I think is perfect like it has a different vitality.

[01:25:37] It brings it back from the dead it resuscitates it or something. Yeah, that's a great example and also takes into account your love for Jay Dilla and like so it's not that this guy doesn't have a point.

[01:25:52] This is one of the great ironies of the story is that there is a lesson about active reading and how to how to interpret text or how to approach taxes I think the best better way of saying it.

[01:26:07] There's a lesson there but it is embedded within this narrator's pretentiousness and just utter absurdity, just ridiculousness and how he's describing it in a way that makes it seems to undercut the message.

[01:26:27] And I think that's actually very much in line with maybe the ultimate message, which is we're not supposed to know what Borges thinks about this. We're supposed to talk about it. We're supposed to debate it.

[01:26:42] We're supposed to compare this story with others with other stories and compare it with other things that we've read and ideas that we have. That's the thing that keeps it alive is that we don't know.

[01:26:58] Like if we knew that Borges was just satirizing it like a particular surrealist or symbolist or structuralist or something like that, that would take away a little bit from me appreciating this story. I have no idea what Borges thinks about this stuff.

[01:27:16] They remind me by the way there is a bit in Tlön Uqbar where they talk about all works being viewed as coming from a single author. Do you remember that? Yeah, yeah.

[01:27:28] Which is a way in which they are reading their texts that is, you know, they're exercising their desire to think of all of them as having come from a singular author and that influences the way they read their literature.

[01:27:44] There's this part that I love about Borges' metanus all the time, his love of meta, which is that you could accuse Borges of being sort of arrogant and pompous in his use of language. Yes, right.

[01:28:03] In fact, this one doesn't have that as much or at least it's embedded in the satire of it. Exactly. But he can get away, he gets away here.

[01:28:13] He can be pompous in his writing and make it as sort of accusatory of the narrator's pompousness, but he gets away with his big words and long for. Well, yeah, you could accuse him of having a trying to have it both ways, but he wants it both ways.

[01:28:28] You know, he wants to be able to say some of these things and he also wants to be able to make fun of himself while he's saying them. Did I tell the story of, I just have a family friend who did his dissertation about Borges? I don't remember.

[01:28:42] But I'm listening at a different time in my life and a different context. That's right. It's a very short story. He finally got to meet Borges Argentinian and he was getting his paycheck.

[01:28:53] I think it's Danford and he finally got a chance to meet Borges and he told Borges that he was doing his dissertation on Borges. And Borges' response was really, shouldn't you find somebody else to think about like that's more interesting than me?

[01:29:11] He just didn't like the thought of somebody spending so much time interpreting his stories seemingly. Right? And which is a very, very odd because he writes his stories in a way that makes me want to do this. That's an interesting, like the Coen brothers are like this too.

[01:29:32] They have these like parables almost of in these movies that can be interpreted in all these different ways. And then when people come at them with any interpretation they're like, they make fun of it almost.

[01:29:44] Look, we're just telling a story or we're just, they try to deflate it, the pretensions of that. And yeah, I think that is a style of certain authors. They're dangling something. They dangle the truth, right?

[01:30:00] They dangle the meaning in front of you and they're motivating you to be curious about it. But they don't want you to be reductive about it either. They don't want you to achieve, like think you've achieved closure on it.

[01:30:15] That would be according to this guy, a plebeian thing to do. Right. Right. Which again, it's so funny and so French. He's embodied a French person. Like this is very much also a parody of a French intellectual.

[01:30:35] That's funny. I hadn't thought of it that way, but all right. Well, have we exhausted the meaning? Not at all. Like I think we could do like a 10 episode series just on this text too. There is like this also this other debate, which I don't find very interesting.

[01:30:52] But you know, like, is it a different text if somebody else writes it? Like there's a metaphysical kind of question to that that gets debated in. Like I don't find, like I think that's the kind of stuff maybe Borges would make fun of.

[01:31:08] But but there are all these other kind of philosophical questions that it does raise to me. It's it's more about reading than writing in a lot of ways. And it's definitely not about the ontology of art. It's about what to do when you have a text.

[01:31:25] Yeah, it's interesting whether it is an ontological question. So whether let's assume that Pierre Menard really did write this chapter, these chapters and that the narrator is reading them. Is that a different work of art even though it is verbally identical?

[01:31:44] Like questions of ontology, like whether something really exists or not get to me. I think in the same way that they get to you where it's like, well, like obviously in some sense, it's a different text.

[01:31:56] I think that's a pretty yeah, it's a perfectly reasonable thing to both read a story say and and know the story what the story is telling you in its words and say, oh, that was a good story.

[01:32:10] And then to add another layer and say, what was who was the author and what were they thinking that adds another layer of richness to it that you can choose to interpret it or not.

[01:32:18] Right. But like that seems obvious to me that it's almost obvious to me that like it seems like a boring debate in that every time a different person reads it. Like you and I reading the exact same translation of the brothers cameras off.

[01:32:32] They are in some sense going to be different works. And just they're different when you yeah when you and I read it when you and I read it five days from now. There's a kind of a heraclitus kind of aspects you never step into the same river twice.

[01:32:47] And I think, you know this gets to that that the context both that a piece is written and a context that you're reading it in is going to affect what you get out of it inescapably.

[01:33:04] And so there is in that sense, there is not the same experience of reading something, you know, even if it might have the same words. I think that it for anybody upon reflection would agree that works of literature go beyond the literal the literal words.

[01:33:29] I think there is interesting questions just like in the reality of this story. Is this did this actually happen? You know, is this a joke?

[01:33:39] I think like what if you interpret this as a joke that was played on a gullible sycophant you read it in one way even if you think it still raises interesting questions.

[01:33:51] If you think that it's not a joke that this guy really tried to do it and then maybe cheated a little bit if he actually reproduced the copies, then that's a different way of understanding it.

[01:34:03] So even just within this story separating anything we know about Borges and the time period just the content of the story itself just has multiple interpretations that there's just no definitive answer to in the story in the story in the text.

[01:34:20] In the story in the text. That's right. That's right. There aren't sufficient clues to tell you that for sure this was a joke, but there are clues and like I to be honest, I take this as a much more hilarious and interesting story if what this was about was a guy who was like always on this guy's nuts.

[01:34:40] He's always on Pierre Menard nuts like he was just one of those guys who's just like oh you're great. And I was like can we hang out? Can we hang out? And Menard just told him like you know what I mean.

[01:34:50] I loved your piece on the George Bulls symbolic logic. Yeah that that that Rooks the the pond, the Rooks pond. Really?

[01:35:01] It's hilarious to me and then I just like I want to believe that that's what was going on that this guy got duped by saying you know unfortunately I even though I have found I wrote thousands of rough drafts.

[01:35:15] Of the Quixote. I didn't keep any of them so here's the final but I totally wrote this. That's hilarious. Have you read Pale Fire? No.

[01:35:25] By Nabokov? You know if we ever do another that might be another one too. If we keep doing miniseries on text because it definitely needs more than one episode but it's it raises a lot of the same questions here that this text does.

[01:35:42] In fact I feel like it's got to be inspired by Borges to some extent. Anyway let's I'm sure this won't be the last Borges story that we do because we love talking about him. I want to be remembered when I'm no longer here for our episodes on Borges.

[01:36:02] What if somebody recreated a very bad wizards episode word for word? Would it be ours? Join us next time on Very Bad Wizards. Pay no attention to that man behind you. Who are you? Boss and with no more brains than you have. Anybody can have a brain?

[01:36:46] You're a very bad man. I'm a very good man. Just a very bad wizard.