"Borges writes that mirrors and copulation are abominable, since they both cause the population to multiply. That assertion probably shows a comprehensive goodwill toward nature, because humankind as a creature, at least as seen from above, seems by and large destructive, craven, and detestable. In this it most resembles, at least according to the author Roberto Bolaño, a rat. But contrary to Borges’s view, mirrors were, for Marco Devoti and I, the summer he and Max Lamas visited us, more than a way to multiply ourselves—which we thought formidable in and of itself—but also a way to multiply the pleasure of what we eventually undertook in my little bedroom."