Quichotte

by Salman Rushdie

It seemed that Sancho was of approximately the same hue as the Beloved, Miss Salma R. So perhaps he was a visitor from the future, the child of Quichotte’s forthcoming marriage to the great lady, and had traveled back through time and space to answer his father’s need for a son’s companionship, and end his long solitude.

Here we go

To a person who had gained a deep understanding of time travel from television, this was entirely possible.

Quichotte himself might say, if he were aware of Brother (which was impossible, naturally),

Hello chekov

Maybe writing about Quichotte was a way of running away from that truth.

This was how she was: capable of emotional brutality and unable, once a clever conceit came into her head, to stop herself from saying it, no matter how deep the wound it might inflict.

Whoa

His father expressed himself more gently, but made the same point. “Look at your little sister,” he would tell his son. “Try to be like her. She never stops talking. She’s an open book.”

Not as powerful

(And now here was Quichotte, his invention, inventing a child for himself and bringing him to life. There wasn’t much doubt about where that idea had originated.)

Yesssss

dog and Miss Holly Golightly would later rename the mean reds)

There was no escape from dynastic biochemistry.

Metal

and children were murdered in schools because of a constitutional amendment that made it easy to murder children in schools;

And now that we have introduced her and set her in some sort of context, let us leave her to sip her evening drink and await her dinner guests, while we retreat into the privacy of these pages to tell her tale.

Picture margot robbie in a bath tub

TO BE A LAWYER in a lawless time was like being a clown among the humorless: which was to say, either completely redundant or absolutely essential.

Obviously, he says. One by one, very quietly, the stars will start going out. I see him. Above all he’s Bilbo/Frodo, eleventy-one today, no wonder he’s crazy for journeying. The Road goes ever on and on. I see him invisible, slipping the Ring on his finger. Ash nazg durbatulûk, ash nazg gimbatul, / Ash nazg thrakatulûk agh burzum-ishi krimpatul. Invisibility is a thing he dearly wishes for. He wants to disappear. Here too is the origin of his desire to follow a wandering star. I will diminish and go into the West and remain Galadriel. This is what he longs for. To diminish and go into the West. To be a person not seen, of no import, going where he will, remaining himself, taking what life gives him, maybe a mendicant, like a monk, or a sannyasi. Maybe even a thief. What has it got in its pocketses? Thief, thief. Baggins…we hates it for ever.

When considering the matter of wooing a great lady,” Quichotte said, “I ponder, naturally, the classics. And by the classics I mean, first of all, the show that broke the ground and pointed the way, The Dating Game, ABC-TV, 1965, ‘from Hollywood, the dating capital of the world.’ We must ask ourselves when we summon up the memory of a masterpiece: what is the wisdom it offers us?” “That we shouldn’t go on dumb dating shows?” proposed Sancho, unhelpfully.

Lmao

“Once you’re born, you’re born, that’s all there is to it; by whatever means you arrive, you’ve arrived. After that you’re the boss of yourself, and responsible only to yourself. Responsibility for your own actions: that’s the basis of all morality, isn’t it? The do-gooder gets the credit for the good deed? The murderer is guilty of the crime?” “We aren’t discussing morality,” said Quichotte. “We are discussing love.”

“By the height of my emotion toward you will you know me,” Quichotte cried out in high rhetorical fashion, “and by the darkness in which I dream of you, and by the handsomeness of the deeds by which I will prove myself, for handsome is as handsome does. And by the determined set of my jaw as I bend the arc of my life toward you, and by the dominant idea which possesses me, which is, that you must be mine.”

Whoa

Quichotte nodded gravely. “A good knowledge of the classics,” he advised his son, “is the sign of an educated man.”

What there mostly is, is snoring. The music of the American nose is a thing to be awestruck by.

Motel living

How do we even begin to understand what a town is or a city if motels can slide across space and time from one to the other?

These days the only way to experience joy was through chemistry. It was necessary first to unplug from the Connectivity and then, as the world faded away, to put euphoria into your mouth and suck on it. This was the lover who never disappointed you, the friend who never failed you, the partner who never cheated on you, the government that never lied. This alone was dependable, loyal, honest, and true. Sleepy, relaxed joy. Here it came. Turn off your mind, relax and float downstream. Ego death. Samadhi. Bliss.

Inside the Motor Inn, they were greeted at the check-in desk by a distinguished-looking man, gray-haired, balding, with an intellectual’s sadly comic face and what sounded like a thick Eastern European accent. He seemed surprised to see them.

“Was this a happy town before the mastodons?” Quichotte asked.

“I have heard a flügelhorn played,” Quichotte said mildly, “and I do not believe it sounds the way you think it sounds.”

Inconcievable

What the boy needed was rest, sympathy, painkillers, and cheeseburgers.

AmericN medicine

He’s an idealist. Right now he’s charging in the wrong direction, let’s say at a windmill, but he can be turned. There are real giants out there for him to fight.”

“We’re not much of a family, are we? But there’s a thing you don’t know about parenthood. It’s mostly about showing up.”

Overnight the troll army vanished, and the culture without memory, which all culture had become, instantly forgot how it had slandered an innocent woman, and moved on. The street quieted down.

“Ask me her name,” Dr. Smile said. “Then let’s see what you think.” When the name was spoken a great radiance opened up in the heavens and flowed down over Quichotte in a cascade of joy. His labors had not been in vain. He had proved himself worthy and now the Grail had manifested herself. He had abandoned reason for the sake of love, accepted the uselessness of worldly knowledge, surrendered his desires and attachments to the world, understood that everything was connected, moved beyond harmony, and now in the Valley of Wonderment the name of the Beloved hung in the air before him as if on a giant flat-screen television. It occurred to him that he loved the man who had caused this miracle to occur.

BETWEEN THE GODS AND MORTAL MEN and women there hung a veil, and its name was maya. The truth was that the fabled world of the gods was the real one, while the supposedly actual world inhabited by human beings was an illusion, and maya, the veil of illusion, was the magic by which the gods persuaded men and women that their illusory world was real. When Quichotte saw Miss Salma R walking toward him through the park, in her invisible mode, attracting not a single glance from the earthbound beings she passed, he understood that her power over the actual was very great, and also that he was about to have an experience granted to very few creatures of flesh and blood: he would pass through the veil and enter the realm of the blessed, where divinities made their sport.

See, if I’m bad—to quote the great Jessica Rabbit—it’s because I’m drawn that way.