Don Quixote, first classic of 2023! \\ lets talk

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Jessie’s IG handle is @dearreaders_thisisjess

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[exploringmegan]

Definitely intimidating! I’ve read part of Don Quixote in Spanish class years ago, but maybe I’ll have to pick it up and read it all the way through at some point. It was fun hearing your thoughts on it.

[joshuadiaz]

New to the channel. I love your enthusiasm and authentic charm when it comes to your excitement to read and review books. Aside from a few casual reads and the Harry Potter series as a teen, reading was not something I did or enjoyed. However, I picked up reading during the COVID lockdown and have kept a steady pace since. I am going to tackle Don Quixote de La Mancha in a few days in the native Spanish which is exciting and intimidating but I’m ready to knock this one off my list!!

[Redskirt]

I confess this is one I haven't read, but I do love the musical! 😂 Thanks for the review, Samantha, and the short biography - I had no idea Cervantes had such a hard time. Don Quixote clearly does have some relevance for today, so nice choice! I look forward to the next one. 😊

[joelharris]

Bravo, bravo, bravo👏 you might like Orlando Furioso, if epics are your thing. Nice hair by the way!

[valis]

Reading in 2024, DON QUIXOTE is a boring slog of a sloppy book. Probably one of the most overrated classics of all time and I'd be willing to gamble the the majority of people who espouse the virtues of Quixote or recommend the book, have never read it. Or gave up 200 pages in.

I didn't. But it was painful. Dare I say, excruciating.

Yes, it's an absolute FOUNTAIN of GORGEOUS language and verbal pyrotechnics. That is not in dispute. It's also encyclopedic in its references to past literature, mythology, and local history.

But imagine now that Don Quixote (or Sancho Panza) as a person. Now imagine this person is someone who is so self important, so highfalutin, so obsessed and spellbound with the sound of their own voice and opinions and proclamations and will windbag didactically at you for hours on end without you asking for it. And when you ask them to stop, they are stubborn enough, they just shout over you and make belittling proclamations about your intelligence.

Now imagine that going on for 1, 000+ pages (the Edith Grossman translation). That is Don Quixote. And some other public figures today if we're being honest.

Probably DQ's gravest transgression is that it's aged badly. Some of it is execution but more often than not it comes down to basic narrative literacy. If you've had any sort of steady or diverse diet in narrative over your lifetime, a lot of what progresses for "happenings" or "events" in Quixote: the tropes, the ridiculous, slapdash slapstick humor, we have all seen done a thousand times before and better -- in cartoons, comics, plays, movies, manga, and of course, novels.

Yes, it was a rousing success at a time when literacy, not just in Spain and most of Europe and the Americas, was at an all-time low. And its "status" of course guarantees it will be forced on successive generations while overlooked tomes like TRISTAM SHANDY still wallow in obscurity. It's a shame really.

My rec is to skip Quixote all together and just watch Wasserman's musical 'The Man of La Mancha' which excises most of the episodic, superfluity of the novel and actually has a real, genuine love story at the center, something the novel really only alludes to yet never consummates.

In fact, the only love story in the novel is really a platonic one between Quixote and Panza and the amor of the book, Dulcinea, is an unrequited Madonna who doesn't exist. And if I really put my psychological cap on, Quixote emanates an array of repressed desires and has in all likelihood never known the intimate company of a woman. His proud chastity is likely a cover, like his madness, for desires he cannot face.

[jettievandenboom]

The original “Don Quixote” is an English book. The Spanish translations appeared in 1605 and 1615, much earlier than the original English publications in 1612 and 1620. Between these two periods, in 1614, a “false” Don Quixote was published under the name Avellaneda. The original English text was never released.

Francis Bacon was the brain behind the three books of Don Quixote; he wrote the part of the hero.
Ben Jonson took on the role of Sancho Panza, John Donne wrote the poems, “the two friends” Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher were assigned the task of writing loose stories. These authors made use of the library owned by Robert Cotton.
The printer, William Stansby, inserted concealed clues into the text, in order for the reader to be able to draw conclusions…

The Spanish translations were carried out by Thomas Shelton (DQI + DQII) and James Mabbe (the “bogus” DQ).
Miguel de Cervantes was just a poor Spanish writer who had sold his name to survive. He had told his life-story to the English, so that it could be processed into the DQ.
Ten people, sworn to secrecy about their collaboration in the writing of Don Quixote. Now in my book, after four hundred years, clarity is given as to the “who”, “what” and “why” of all this secrecy. Jettie H. van den Boom