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QUIXAND
August 6-17, 2005
He received a hearty welcome
from the goatherds.
-- Cervantes,
"Don Quixote" (1605-1615) All page numbers,
Part 1, Chapter XI, p. 83 Penguin Classics edition
Trans: John Rutherford.
(ISBN 0 14 24.3723 9)
Nice to read some high brow
literature for once about
people vomiting on each other.
We pretty much all have some familiarity with
the Don Quixote story in outline -- a madman
thinks he's a Knight, and goes off on deluded Everything you've
"Adventures", such as the infamous tilting at heard about in this
windmills. book occurs in it's
first 100 pages.
This is of course the source for
the strangely mispronounced This may say something
adjective "quixotic". about the remaining
900 or so.
In essence, Don
Quixote is just
"Don Quixote" is one Trying to another overblown
of the candidates you read this serial --
sometimes hear book straight
proposed for Greatest through is The modern era did
Novel Ever Written, neither not invent milking
and one of my own necessary nor a popular property.
quixotic endeavors is desireable...
to try and read all And indeed,
of them and decide It's much like Cervantes has
for myself. renting the included some
entire run of amusing rants
"Star Trek" and about the
trying to watch terrible state
it all in one of the theater
If you're interested sitting. in his
in the score "War era... one could
and Peace" is still fill in the word
winning. Hollywood
WAR_AND_PEACE instead, and no
Tolstoy is handily one would guess
beating out Twain, it was written
Melville, Hugo 500 years ago.
and now Cervantes.
THEATRICAL_RANTING
Swift still to go.
But also, I had a particular
reason for investigating
how Cervantes presents
Quixote's madness.
I had this Great Insight
about "Chivalry" as an ethical I'd been reading works
system focused on means rather like Walter Scott's
than ends: "Ivanhoe", and (much
better) Conan Doyle's
In a world sufficiently bleak "The White Company"...
that positive outcomes always
seem to recede, upholding a LIGHT_EXPECTATIONS
"code of honor" would at least
be an achievable goal.
But I was afraid that
this line of thought Could it be that Cervantes
might not be so original... had gotten to this idea
already? What was I doing
philosophizing about Chivalry
It seemed awfully when I hadn't even read
close to the any Cervantes?
notion of Quixote
as a man afflicted For all I knew, the
with a noble famous "Don Quixote"
madness. was the original
source of Doyle's
depiction of Chivalry.
A Quixote-figure could be
presented as someone with
the courage to engage in
an existential act of I'm pretty
self-creation, to attempt sure that I've
to re-define himself in heard this At the very
spite of his apparent line argued, least I've
unsuitability for the role but I don't seen it
he wants to play, and in remember where suggested
spite of the dissonance at this point. that Don
between the role and the Quixote
mundane world. allows for
multiple
The willingness to be interpretations.
absurd would then be the
true heroic act.
"'But uncle, why do you have 'I know who I am,' retorted
to go and get involved in Don Quixote, 'and I know
these arguments? Wouldn't that I can be not only all
it be better to stay quietly those whom I have mentioned,
at home instead of looking but every one of the Twelve
for better bread than what's Peers of France, and every
made from wheat, and one of the Nine Worthies as
forgetting that many a man's well, because all the deeds
gone out shearing and come performed by them both
back shorn?' singly and together will be
exceeded by mine.'
part 1, Chapter VII, p. 61 part 1 chapter V, p. 50
But there are very few
touches like this of
what might be taken as
reverse english. And I sincerely hope
that no one holds it
And they come very up as a grand example
early in the story. of the unreliable
narrator.
Then it settles down
into what seems like That "translated from the
an interminable Hope arabic" is a pretty silly,
& Crosby routine. meaningless piece of schtick
on Cervantes part... the
There's precious little voice of the story remains
to indicate that resoundingly, monotonously
Cervantes had any consistent throughout.
sympathy for Quixote's
delusions whatsoever.
There is something
Perhaps: appealing about the
thought of
'That is the whole generations of
point,' replied Don obsessed academics
Quixote, 'and therein grouping through the
lies the beauty of my entrails of this low
enterprise. A knight brow slapstick,
errant going mad for a desperately
good reason --- there searching for some
is neither pleasure nor complex meaning.
merit in that. The
thing is to become "Don
insane without a cause How many dissertations Quixote"
and have my lady think: have there been on the itself
if I do all this when meaning of the tale of a focus
dry, what would I not 300 sheep? for a
do when wet? ...' kind of
(I hope I have the madness.
number right.)
Part 1, Chapter XXV, p. 209
Inspired to imitate Cardenio,
"the Ragged Knight"
'The devil take you peasant!'
said Don Quixote. 'What good
sense you sometimes speak!
Anyone would think you'd been
to university!'
Part 1, Chapter XXXI, p. 285
Quixote to Sancho
I went looking for a
work about chivalric
ideals, but instead "Don A satire of some extremely
Quixote" just appears to safe targets: the tale of
be a very broad piece of chivalry and it's censors,
comedy. long after both were dead
issues. (Though I gather
that Cervantes'
occasional
Don Quixote isn't the source. disrespectful
It's just more commentary. swipes at the
Church were
I'm always reaching for regarded as a
"High Noon" and ending up bit more edgey.)
with "Blazing Saddles".
WHITE_WASHED
If anything, Cervantes is taking
a position diametrically opposed
to my notion...
He repeatedly makes fun of the
way that Quixote's actions
achieve nothing worthwhile, no
matter how proud he is of them:
" 'It is not the
responsibility of knights
errant to discover whether the
afflicted, the enchained and
the oppressed whom they '... And you're to blame
encounter on the road are for it all, because if
reduced to these circumstances you'd gone on your way
and suffer this distress for and hadn't come poking
their vices, or for their your nose into other
virtues; the knight's sole people's business, my
responsibility is to succour master would have been
them as people in need, having content to hit me a dozen
eyes only for their or a couple of dozen
sufferings, not for their times, and then he'd have
misdeeds. I came across a untied me and paid me
rosary of angry, wretched men, what he owed me.'
I did with them what my
religion requires of me, and Part 1, Chapter XXXI, p. 287
nothing else is any concern of Andrés to Quixote
mine; ... " and company
p. Part I, Chapter XXX, p.271
Quioxte excuses releasing
criminals from a chain gang.
A book about the way
people relate to fiction...
This story about a delusional fan who
takes the fiction too seriously has
been done again many times since And Sancho Panza's
Quixote -- I think of it as a "Walter creative mangling of
Mitty" story (without much respect language will forever
for priority or accuracy). seem to me like Leo
Gorcey schtick, from
the Bowery Boys.
Most recently, I saw
a satire of Indian
television -- "Raghu
Romeo" (2003), Certainly watchable, with
about a man lost in some funny satire of Indian
that world. music video, but the man's
obvious insanity makes the
story hard to get into.
There are innumerable things (I've never understood the
like the Bob Hope movie, "My appeal of fiction where
Favorite Brunette" where the you're supposed to laugh
main character really wants *at* the main characters.
to be a hardboiled private Give me the Marx Brothers,
eye... every time.)
A personal favorite of
that sub-genre is the
British film "Gumshoe" "Gumshoe" is a movie that
(1971). works well as a satire of
a detective-adventure
story and also a good
(written by example of the genre.
Neville Smith,
directed by The reason it works: at
Stephen Frears) any moment you can't tell
whether the main character
is really being crazy, or
might have something going on.
There's a level of suspense
to that that's missing from
the usual fantasy of the
Competent Man.
And, in comparison, Don
Quixote is universally
a fuck-up throughout.
How common is the
Quixote syndrome,
really?
I would say that if anything we
suffer from the opposite disease.
Far from being surrounded by
people who are trying to be like
the heroes of adventure stories,
our real trouble is that if you
get near any kind of idealism or And there are a lot of
grand ambition you'll get shot people out there who seem
down with an "Oh, grow up. Can't to have gone "Heroism?
you be *realistic* for once?" Uh... I'll take the
Likeable Rogue option,
please."
BRAIN_PULP
A book about unreliability of human reason...
The canon was gazing at Don Quixote and wondering at this
strange great madness of his, and at how he showed a fine
understanding in all his remarks and replies, only taking
leave of his senses, as has already been pointed out, when
chivalry was the subject under discussion.
Part 1, Chapter XLIX, p. 451
Sancho said all this with
such calm assurance, every
so often wiping his nose
with the back of his hand, SHANDY_TOWN_MIND
and it was all so absurd,
that both men were again
struck with amazement as
they considered how
powerful Don Quixote's ' ... what must have happened is that
madness was, carrying this those who have enchanted me have
poor man's wits along with assumed their likenesses; because it
it. is easy for enchanters to take on
whatever appearance they please, and
Part 1, Chapter XXVI, p. 226 they must have taken on the appearance
of our friends to make you think what
you are thinking, and lead you into a
maze of conjectures from which you
would not be able to extricate
yourself even if provided with the
thread of Theseus. ... '
Don Quixote to Sancho.
Part I, Chapter XLVIII, p. 447
A collection of fragments....
When Cervantes drops the Two Stooges
routine and goes off on a tangent,
the book gets much more readable.
The stories within a story all work "I've never seen a book
pretty well as stories, even though of chivalry that could be
they're extremely simple tales regarded as a whole body
of romantic romance. complete with all its
members, and in which the
"The Tale of Inappropriate middle corresponds with
Curiosity" is probably the the beginning and the end
best... with the beginning and
the middle; on the
The Captive escaping from the contrary, their authors
Moors is okay too -- the detail give them so many members
in the setup there makes it that their intention
look like he was making a stab seems more to produce a
at historical fiction, or chimera or a monster than
possibly travelog. a well-proportioned
figure. ... "
Part 1, Chapter XLVII, p.440
The canon, to the priest
Even the stuff about the Ragged A fine example of the old
Knight (Cardenio) works okay, self-deprecating hypocrisy
despite being resolved by joke (one of the seven
multiple forced coincidences. deadly types of humor).
So: what is Cervantes saying about
our relationship to fiction, by
interjecting these simple stories
into the satiric narrative without
any noticiable irony?
Showing by example how
a Quixote can be seduced?
Or is he apologizing for
coming down so hard on
tales of romance?
NULL_HINGED
"Don Quixote" is a
tribute to the engaging
power of fiction of
which the novel itself
has nil.
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