Coetzee versus Menard, or the Making of a Writer

ABSTRACT This essay investigates the origins and development of the influence of Borges on J.M. Coetzee, focusing particularly on the formative period of Coetzee in the United States (1965–1971) and on the writing and form of his first novel, Dusklands (1974). The period coincided with the dissemination of Borges’s work in North America, and ‘Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote’ was one of the key Borges texts whose trace can be found in the writing of Dusklands, among other novels. Allusions and references to stories by Borges, as well as Coetzee’s 1998 review of his Collected Fictions, are also discussed.