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The person like Don Quixote	3	27	07/08/2008 09:02AM

John rated it:

(review of isbn 0142437239)

04/03/08

Has a copy to sell/swap — Read in March, 2008

recommended to John by: Ted Hoagland
recommends it for: Classics readers, knights-fiction readers

In short: it's a frickin' classic of world literature. Read it.

In slightly longer, but still short: an amusing an infamous first fifty pages with lots of hit-or-miss after that. The second half gets dreadfully stale, but has an interesting ending from a literary analytical standpoint.

In long: I'm using this review space as a journal of reading the incredible mountain of pages.

Day 1: Here goes nothing. Here come 1,000 pages of translated text.

The opening was insufferably cheeky, a...more

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Ryan rated it:

(review of isbn 0060934344)

07/26/08

bookshelves: literature

Read in July, 2008

On the translation:

From flipping through a few, I decided the Edith Grossman version was the best despite lack of notes. Not archaic but not too modern either. She describes it as a combination between a 19th century European novel and William Faulkner. Why not?

On the novel:

What sort of 'idealism' is satirized in Don Quixote? This is the standard reading of what the book's 'point' is, as the inaugural text of a tradition -- the modern novel -- whose raison d'etre is s...more

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John rated it:

(review of isbn 0142437239)

09/14/08

Read in September, 2008

recommends it for: anyone who appreciates postmodern narratives.

There are many books out there that you're "supposed" to read. You know, the books that were assigned to you in high school, or the books that were popular in their day, or enormously influential for the history of literature. I usually have a large list of these in the back of my mind that someday I'll get to. Cervantes Don Quixote has been on that list for some time; after all, it's often claimed to be the original modern novel. It's difficult to be more influential than that! Anyway...more There are many books out there that you're "supposed" to read. You know, the books that were assigned to you in high school, or the books that were popular in their day, or enormously influential for the history of literature. I usually have a large list of these in the back of my mind that someday I'll get to. Cervantes Don Quixote has been on that list for some time; after all, it's often claimed to be the original modern novel. It's difficult to be more influential than that! Anyway, I taught a writing class in which we read parts of the work, but I just never felt like sitting down and reading the whole thing. Well, I did that this past month.

And you know what, like other books that you're "supposed" to read, it turns out to be a really amazing book. The curious thing is that it reads like a postmodern novel, and in this respect it reminds me a lot of contemporary Italian fiction. Not bad for a work written in 1605. For instance, look at the complexity of the narrative: in the ninth chapter Cervantes presents the work as if it was the product of a translator who copied it from an Arabic original version by Cide Hamete Benengeli, who probably lied and distorted the truth. But what "truth" is being distorted if it is actually a work of fiction that is being written by Cervantes? There are even further levels of fiction in the book, since characters themselves tell stories that contain stories, and so on. The complexity of the narrative levels underscores the farcical nature of the work, and makes it seem rather postmodern in the way it deconstructs truth.

The work is also a farce in terms of its subject matter. The basic premise of the story is that Don Quixote reads so many works of fiction that he begins to believe them, and wanders out into the world as a knight errant seeking to save maidens and defeat knights. But as the story repeatedly emphasizes, there are no such things as knights errant during Don Quixote's day, and so nearly everyone in the book thinks the hero is completely mad. And even though there may be some “real” precedents for some of the things Don Quixote does (after all he does have a suit of armor in his house, and some of the stories in the work are understood to be "real"), they are in the far distant past. This gives Cervantes the opportunity to reflect on a previous genre of literature, in much the same way that postmodern authors take apart the works of modernist authors. And he carries out some of this criticism with ridiculous detail.

One thing that is certain is that Don Quixote is a long book: 982 pages in the English translation. I admit that sometimes I needed to take a break from it. But I always went back. Highlights that come to mind from the first part of the book include the opening with the famous windmill scene (1-8), Sancho's amazing deconstruction of the literary form (Chapter 20 - maybe not everyone's favorite part, but when you hear his story, think about what you’ve been reading throughout), the Tale of Inappropriate Curiosity (Chapters 33-35), the amazing cadenza to the first part when the travelers go to the inn (Chapters 32-52). In the second part of the book the story of Camacho's wedding (Chapters 19-21) The adventure of the bray (Chapters 25-27), the fact there is a jet-propelled horse (Chapter 41), and Sancho's governorship (Chapters 44-53). Anyway, a lot of these won't be as much fun without the context and development, so the work really is one that pays reading from the beginning. If you can't make it to the end of the whole work, at least make it to the end of the first part (479pp). The way all the plot lines come together at the inn is really overwhelming.

I'm sure the work is even better in the old Spanish. Perhaps someday I'll make it through that. In the meantime, the story is sophisticated and creative enough that the genius of the work is apparent even in an English translation. I wonder what it was like in the original Arabic? :-)

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John rated it:

(review of isbn 0060934344)

03/11/08

bookshelves: novel

Read in March, 2006

Whew. I did it. I'm ready to run the New York Marathon, climb Mount Everest, swim the Mekong River, and hunt the nefarious arctic narwhale, now that I've read Don Quixote in its entirety. And I am truly a better person for it.

Until now, I've only read Don Quixote in small doses, reading his battle with the windmills or his mistaking a barber's washbin for the Helmet of Mambrino out of context, either for class or in anthologies. After reading the first book in sequence, I'm ashamed of mysel...more Whew. I did it. I'm ready to run the New York Marathon, climb Mount Everest, swim the Mekong River, and hunt the nefarious arctic narwhale, now that I've read Don Quixote in its entirety. And I am truly a better person for it.

Until now, I've only read Don Quixote in small doses, reading his battle with the windmills or his mistaking a barber's washbin for the Helmet of Mambrino out of context, either for class or in anthologies. After reading the first book in sequence, I'm ashamed of myself. Grossman's translation certainly adds some accessibility for the the American sensibility, but what struck me most was Cervantes' ironic self-awareness and societal critique, and his playfulness with the novel form that wasn't even technically a form yet. Quixote, whose heroes exist only in his mind at the novel's beginning, eventually meets and argues hilariously with some of them as well as plenty of third parties that stand in disbelief at his lunacy.

It would be impossible to write a comprehensive book review of this book without writing a book myself, so I think I'll just comment randomly:

I laughed and thought hardest when Cervantes brought in the ladies, both real and imagined, to continually check Quixote's romanticization of the female persuasion. His lady Dulcinea of Toboso seems to be a man-like wheat-shocker, but you'd never know it from his visions of her angelic graces. But Quixote seems to be just a worst-case scenario of all the male impulses the other characters display; pretty much all the men objectify women to superhuman levels, and many of the women are either affronted or jilted by the men's fickle imaginations.

I've heard the second book is quite a bit darker and even more self-referential as Quixote waited 10 years between books, and I have agree. Especially in the second book, I wasn’t sure what to think of the "royalty" DQ and Poncho ran into along their merry way. Either the irony was too subtle for my radar, or Cervantes seemed to be in on the arrogant, mean-spirited, sadistic jokes the landed gentry played on the deluded duo. Some of the jokes (the flying horse, for example) were laugh-out-loud funny, but some were just, well, wrong (Altisodora's feigned love for Quixote, practically starving Sancho after giving him his insula governorship). And then some, like the 3000 lashes Sancho had to give his own sweaty buttocks to make Dulcinea pretty again, were both, but mainly because of Sancho's ingenious ways of avoiding delivering the lashes.

The ending really sucked. The episodic nature of the novel I guess prevents any climactic closure, but without giving anything away, Cervantes ends the novel so apologetically that he seems to go ideologically against every previous chapter. I would have stopped reading with ten pages to go if it hadn't been such a long trip to the end.

To my pleasure, the novel was much more violent overall than I expected. If you took out and strung together all the lumps, cuts, bruises, tramplings, beatings, and lashes Quixote and Sancho took it would rival The Passion of the Christ. And be a hundred times more enjoyable.
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Steve rated it:

(review of isbn 0060934344)

01/15/08

Read in January, 2008

A classic in every sense of the word.

Called “the Spanish Bible”, the story of the Man from La Mancha (1605) and the Return of the Man from La Mancha (1615) is one of the most famous literary works in the world and rightfully so. Here, the two works are placed in a single volume and, as translated by Edith Grossman, the characters come crazily alive.

In the first book, we are introduced to Alonso Quixano, an intelligent man who spends too much time reading chivalric novels and romantic ta...more A classic in every sense of the word.

Called “the Spanish Bible”, the story of the Man from La Mancha (1605) and the Return of the Man from La Mancha (1615) is one of the most famous literary works in the world and rightfully so. Here, the two works are placed in a single volume and, as translated by Edith Grossman, the characters come crazily alive.

In the first book, we are introduced to Alonso Quixano, an intelligent man who spends too much time reading chivalric novels and romantic tales. One day, he snaps, believes himself to be Don Quixote, knight errand, and, after talking a neighboring farmer called Sancho Panza into being his squire in return for an island (insula) to govern, leaves his village to seek adventure and to rid the world of evil in the name of his beloved Dulcinea of Toboso, who happens to be some local farm girl that he has built up as this object of impossible beauty.

What follows next are a series of beat downs, misunderstandings, and adventures of a sort. The famous assault on the windmills happens early and from there we are lost in the imagination of Don Quixote and the reality that keeps butting in. As time moves on, and as a commentary on the first book, which was a mad hit, the sequel was made ten years later only to quash the “unauthorized” sequels. The adventures become more adventurous and end in the only real way they can.

What surprised me was how modern it is. The writing style is not out of place today and his use of meta narratives was not only unexpected but also good. And it did make me laugh. The first book is funnier than the second but what is lost in situational comedy is gained in character development.

That is where these books stand the test of time. The stories themselves aren’t out of the ordinary, at least until the second book, but the relationship between Don Quixote and Sancho Panza is. The book lives in the conversations between them; a true believer and a lost soul that wants to believe but has to be the buffer with reality.

Don Quixote has had such an influence that the name Quixote has become an English word (quixotic) meant to define an impossible quest based on romantic notions. And that’s why Don Quixote is loved. He is the guy tilting at windmills because, even though he sees a dragon, he’s trying to live up to an impossible ideal of what life could be. His motivation isn’t bad. We all act out of love when it really comes down to it and his actions are no exception. Only in his mind do his goals manifest, but unlike most of us, Quixote goes after them irrespective of the world might think because the only world that matter is the one he is living.

And Sancho sees what we see. Critics have argued that these novels are really about Sancho and his attempts to reconcile the real world with that of his master and that it is Sancho’s journey that most reflects the human condition. Don Quixote is simply the vehicle.

Either way, this is a must read. It is long, but surprising. Invest your time in the Man from La Mancha. You won’t regret it,
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Belarius rated it:

(review of isbn 0142437239)

02/06/08

bookshelves: fiction-finished, literature

Read in April, 2004

recommends it for: The Literati And Pseudoliterati

I'll be the first to admit it: I'm a fan of popular fiction. I desire enjoyment from certain factors of pacing and style that the literary elite consider "common" and I, in turn, generally find "literature" to be incredibly pretentious. This has led me to hold what some might consider "uncultured" opinions about various great works.

Which brings us to Don Quixote, which many in the literary elite consider to be the greatest novel ever written.

Did I love Don...more I'll be the first to admit it: I'm a fan of popular fiction. I desire enjoyment from certain factors of pacing and style that the literary elite consider "common" and I, in turn, generally find "literature" to be incredibly pretentious. This has led me to hold what some might consider "uncultured" opinions about various great works.

Which brings us to Don Quixote, which many in the literary elite consider to be the greatest novel ever written.

Did I love Don Quixote? I wouldn't go that far. Does it deserve to be called the greatest novel ever written? I'm willing to put it on the short list.

Here's the thing: Cervantes published Don Quixote in the early 17th century, while Shakespeare was still working through his "tragic" phase (Hamlet & whatnot). By rights, it should be like so much other "classic literature:" dense, slow, utterly irrelevant to modern life, and soporific. Instead, it's dense, slow, engaging, and surprisingly relevant. Cervantes manages, almost continuously, to be clever in ways that transcend the 400-year gap and resonate with us now. There's no question that adapting to the writing style of that era is a challenge, and Don Quixote will be slow going to readers accustomed to modern pop fiction. But most intelligent readers will consider this a price worth paying.

Why Don Quixote still works stems largely from its having taken the formulas of "heroic knighthood" (which we are still vaguely familiar with as legend today) and showing it to be cartoonish and absurd. Despite the cultural gap, modern readers will still get the gist of the parody, even if they haven't read the chivalric literature that it is an explicit parody of.

The other reason the story works is because, strangely, we find ourselves continuously at odds with the author over the character of Don Quixote himself. We are told, at every turn, that Quixote is a fool, a madman, and a sinner. Cervantes breaks from the traditional role of a passive narrator to make constant judgment on Quixote's failures and flaws. And because we see Quixote so maligned by both his own author and everyone in the book, we as the reader fall in love with him. By writing a book about a dreamer with unassailable ideals but using the narrative voice of a vitriolic cynic, Cervantes forces us to stand up for the nobility and purity that Quixote achieves. Cervantes has, in effect, martyred his own protagonist in such a dramatic way that it falls to the reader to elevate Quixote to the status of saint.

And any book that can pull that off is worth the difficult prose....less

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Baiocco rated it:

(review of isbn 0140440100)

02/07/08

bookshelves: fiction

Read in February, 2008

recommends it for: PhD/Grad school kids or those possessed

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

Sooooo.....I finally finished this 940 page behemoth! It only took me 5 months. Funny thing was, I already knew how it ended, and what happened along the way, and I didn't really like the writing and it was 600 pages longer than anything else I've read in the last few years. But something about it made me want to finish it...and yes, I was basically seeing windmills and knights by the end of it, so to say it was something of a Quixotic experience would fit. Actually my main motivation for re...more Sooooo.....I finally finished this 940 page behemoth! It only took me 5 months. Funny thing was, I already knew how it ended, and what happened along the way, and I didn't really like the writing and it was 600 pages longer than anything else I've read in the last few years. But something about it made me want to finish it...and yes, I was basically seeing windmills and knights by the end of it, so to say it was something of a Quixotic experience would fit. Actually my main motivation for reading Don Quixote was two-fold and neither really had anything to do with me liking it, but were both befitting of some larger duty: 1) I wanted to see that Terry Gilliam movie Lost in La Mancha about a failed effort to make Don Quixote into a movie, and so I wanted to read the book first because I believe in some untold and usually untested faith that books are better than movie adaptations of books; 2) I bought this book when I first moved back to New York this summer and didn't have a job and I convinced myself that if I read a little bit each day I would have a job by the time I finished it. Luckily for my wallet, I found two jobs by the end of book 1. But kept reading anyway, spurred by Quixote's lust for Dulcinea.

What I really liked about this book was that Quixote really knew his shit about Knighthood and Knight Errantry, as his library is referenced. I have friends in Grad School or working on their PH.Ds who equally know their shit about their dis topic and are equally as enchanted and dutiful as Quixote was in believing that some greater power will bestow upon them a grace if they can just...finish...that...damned...dissertation, so it was inspiring to read a tale that for 900 pages encourages and enables their madman (and woman) dreams. The last 40 pages, however, really assasinates those same dreams, and were by far the best to read.

In fact, the entirety of book 2 takes on an extremely sober tone and really makes you feel for the Gentleman of La Mancha as he faces his own disillusionment and death. It reminded me of Rimbaud's mythology wherein he ended up growing disillusioned with poetry, quit and ended up in Africa as a carpet salesman until he died, alone and lost. Very sad indeed.

By the way, I ended up seeing the Gilliam movie and realized 1) that a movie adaptation of Don Quixote would've sucked and 2) aside from the one time I saw "Brazil" really stoned and the two times I saw "12 Monkeys" I don't really like Terry Gilliam. And I don't looooove Monty Python either. so what?...less

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Nicholas rated it:

(review of isbn 0142437239)

03/30/08

Read in March, 2008

recommends it for: Everyone

This book took me a long time to read. It is over 1,000 pages long! I had been wanting to read it for a long time, because it is considered the first novel and because the Spaniards are so proud of it and of Miguel Cervantes (the author). There are streets, libraries, buildings, etc. all over the place named after him or his book.

The thing that amazed me about this book is how entertaining it was, even though it was so long. It is usually difficult for long books to hold my interest but this...more This book took me a long time to read. It is over 1,000 pages long! I had been wanting to read it for a long time, because it is considered the first novel and because the Spaniards are so proud of it and of Miguel Cervantes (the author). There are streets, libraries, buildings, etc. all over the place named after him or his book.

The thing that amazed me about this book is how entertaining it was, even though it was so long. It is usually difficult for long books to hold my interest but this one did. It tells of the various misadventures of an older Spanish gentleman who believes that he is a fearless traveling knight. He searches for adventures with his trusty squire Sancho Panza, and they certainly find their fair share.

The back of the book says "...life is an unending dialogue between a knight of the spirit who is ever striving to soar aloft, and a squire who strives with might and main to keep his feet firmly planted on the ground."

A lot of Don Quixote's initial adventures didn't seem to fit this description to me. In fact, the first part of the book was often exasperating, because Don Quixote would embark on "adventures" that would end up being real disasters. One of the worse was when he freed a group of prisoners from a chain gang, most of which were justly imprisoned. He caused damage and loss of property in other situations, and he really injured some people for no good reason. This didn't seem to me to fit the "noble spirit" part of the book's description.

In the second half of the book though I came to feel a bond and a connection with the crazy characters. By then, Sancho Panza is just as crazy as his master, if not more so, but when people played tricks on him for their own amusement, I got really upset at the nerve those people had.

Finally, besides being entertaining, there are little nuggets of great wisdom throughout the book, much as there were in Les Miserables which is so often quoted. For example, "consider what you are and try to know yourself, which is the most difficult study in the world." Don Quixote then goes on to describe how knowing oneself and one's origins can help keep one from pride and from sin. There are many, many sage bits of advice throughout the book, which I should have written down, but did not.

In short, this book is great and I recommend reading it. Don't be worried about finishing it, just savor a little each day until it is done. ...less

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Julia added it (review of isbn 039397281X)

10/06/08

bookshelves: on-pause

Since there was a decade between their publications, I've decided to take a little break between volumes. Let the first one settle in.

It'd probably be a waste of space to really review Volume 1 of a book everyone can pretty much agree is among the best of literature. So I'm gonna quibble on the details:

J or Q? Come on guys, what's the deal?

So this translation puts everything in more modern language. Generally I have no problem with this. But other people do. I told a friend of mine I...more

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C F S R rated it:

(review of isbn 0142437239)

07/14/08

bookshelves: classics, humour

Shakespearean feel - more in the plotting and tales within tales (eg The Man Who was Recklessly Curious, stolen by Mozart for Cosi fan Tutte) than the language. In fact, the story of Cardenio is thought to be the basis for Shakespeare's lost play of the same name. Very funny - slapstick, toilet and more subtle humour, with lots of factual historical and chivalric detail as well, but it doesn't feel especially Spanish to me. Certainly long, but I don't understand why, supposedly, so few people ma...more Shakespearean feel - more in the plotting and tales within tales (eg The Man Who was Recklessly Curious, stolen by Mozart for Cosi fan Tutte) than the language. In fact, the story of Cardenio is thought to be the basis for Shakespeare's lost play of the same name. Very funny - slapstick, toilet and more subtle humour, with lots of factual historical and chivalric detail as well, but it doesn't feel especially Spanish to me. Certainly long, but I don't understand why, supposedly, so few people manage to finish it. Some of DQ's delusions hurt only himself (tilting at windmills), but others lead to suffering for his "squire" Sancho Panza (tossed in a blanket) or reluctant beneficiaries of his salvation (the beaten servant, beaten even more once DQ departs) and bemuse people (mistaking inns for castles, sheep for enemy armies and ordinary women as princesses) and are used to justify theft (the golden "helmet"/bowl) and non-payment to inn-keepers. His resolute optimism in the face of severe pain and disaster is extraordinary. Meanwhile, Sancho wavers between credulity (wishfully thinking the promise of an island for him to rule will come true) and pragmatism. Reading it whilst Tristan and Anders repeatedly watched and quoted Monthy Python's Holy Grail was amusing!

Part II starts with Cervantes' response to the unknown writer of an unofficial sequel to part 1, though DQ, Sancho and others also critique it in early chapters. The following story presumes that part 1 is true, and shows how DQ's resulting fame affects his subsequent adventures. A very modern mix of "fact" and fiction. Some characters doubt his exploits, others pander to them, especially the duke and duchess who go to great lengths to treat him in knightly/chivalric manner, and provide new adventures (for their amusement, at the painful expense of DQ and Sancho). Sancho gets rather more scope for lengthy meanderings of jumbled and largely irrelevant proverbs. Less slapstick and more pontificating than part I - both DQ's advice to Sancho on how to govern his promised insula and when Sancho has intriguing disputes to resolve.
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Alison rated it:

(review of isbn 0060934344)

03/05/08

Read in March, 2008

recommended to Alison by: Jorge Luis Borges

Woo-hoo, Brooke owes me a beer (which I'll feed to Karl)!

I don't know if it was because I was tired (I only read it in bed before going to sleep at night), but after 6 months I'd gotten through only the first 100-odd pages. But then it (or I) started flying. The first thing that got me was the cat joke (im in yr cavalcade saturizing yr litrary deloojuns), then the rapidly escalating violence, and by the time Sancho got tossed in a blanket, I was laughing out loud every few pages.

Nothin...more

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Thomas rated it:

(review of isbn 8420467286)

06/02/08

Read in July, 2006

Kind of a hard one to review without sounding or cheesy. I know a lot of people out there might be scared off by this book's age or its status as a classic, which is often a synonym for boring (I think it was Twain who said that classics were books that everyone praised but no one ever read). My message is this : don't be scared. Give it a try, and you won't be disappointed. Simply stated, Don Quijote is hilarious, tragic, light-hearted and deep all at once. It is extremely complex, full of...more

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Tucker rated it:

(review of isbn 0142437239)

06/10/08

Read in May, 2007

As a kid did you ever dream about being a knight like the ones in the books you read? Well in Don Quixote, a delusional 50 year old man starts trying to fulfill this dream. Journeying through Spain with his squire Sancho Panza, Don Quixote finds many "adventures" that to most people wouldn't seem like adventures at all, but to Don Quixote who is thinks windmills are giants, and a flock of sheep is an army, anything is an adventure.

One very enjoyable part is that the main charac...more

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Ryan rated it:

(review of isbn 039397281X)

05/16/08

Read in December, 2007

I loved this book so much that I want to get it tattooed all over my body. We all know (or think we know) what this story is about, but we are all wrong wrong wrong. This is the first modern novel for God's sake! Did you know that Cervantes and Shakespeare are thought to have died on exactly the same day in 1615 (albeit on different calendars)? To me this novel represents everything that I love about literature and seems to be a direct influence on every book that I've loved since it was first p...more

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erik rated it:

(review of isbn 0451525078)

08/24/08

bookshelves: literature

Read in May, 1964

recommended to erik by: no one
recommends it for: everyone

I read Don Quixote during junior high school. We were being regularly forced to spend time at Lincoln's library and encouraged to check out books to read for extra credit. I recall reading Cervantes, Jules Verne and John Gunther's Inside Russia Today, of all things, under these conditions. The Cervantes and Gunther books were both big and that was probably a factor in my choices. I was quite aware of being precocious in those days and probably figured on impressing the homeroom English teach...more

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Papershredder rated it:

(review of isbn 0142437239)

02/22/08

Well, third time was the charm in this case. I'll spare you the personal history this book and I have.

I read the book on my own, not part of school. Both volumes, to the last word. I just read a modern fantasy novel that was about 900 pages, in about 1.5 weeks. This book (about 1000 or so pages)took me nearly 1.5 years. I read about 50 other books in this period as sometimes I dreaded the DQ. This is not a book to try to read in bed, unless your doing late fall trail work in the remote wild...more

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