Kristin Todd

"The Approach to Al-Mu'tasim" and "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote" were shorter stories this week, but they were still a little confusing.  I think I understood the gist of both stories.  The first one was Borges talking about the novel The Approach to Al-Mu'tasim.  Borges first gives a summary of the first two chapters of the book.  He then analyses the rest of the novel.  The other story was about Pierre Menard, the author of the Quixote.  Borges discuses that Miguel de Cervantes was the first one who wrote the Quixote.  He discusses the similarities of the novels and the differences between them.  At one point, he put a quote from both books that was exactly the same, but said that they were different because of the language.  I didn't see the difference because the two sentences looked the same to me.