Piers Smith [to JM: A "takeoff"? Or is it a "takefrom" without soaring? ... Is this a regular literary practice?]  - "It wasn't that bad. It explained the phone calls, and gave a new twist to the son's madness. But yes, the practice has been common since Genesis, and possibly before. Borges' Pierre Menard provides a worthy comment. "
 
Jansy Mello: Good remembrance: Borges's "Pierre Menard" offers a worthy, intriguing and funny comment on the arts of "copying," "re-creating," "being truthful, or dependent, on the vocabulary,mentality and costumes of an era," and other procedures I don't recollect right now. However, it's a successful short-story  and it doesn't actually plagiarize, or explain, "Don Quixote."  I was surprised that it was accepted for publication in The New Yorker. 
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