Well, I said I was putting
Don Quixote on the Wish List, and today it is here. This is perhaps the fattest
Penguin classic I have, 982 pages with a further 40 pages of notes. I had to
have a copy. Whether you classify it as an anti-Romance novel or deep-state
Romance novel, it is one of the pillars of literature, the so-called ‘First
Novel’ of the Western canon.
It is not, of course, my
first copy of Don Quixote. For many years I had this paperback
And briefly this hardback
edition (originally in Mike’s library but now, I believe, belonging to John):
When I realized I no longer
owned an edition I knew I had to get one, though I had never completely read
either copy when I had them. Incidents within the tale are so well-known it
seems almost superfluous: the Don’s capturing a barber’s basin to use as a
helmet, his tilting at windmills (a phrase that has entered common parlance),
Sancho Panza being tossed in a blanket, Quixote’s imaginary ‘lady fair’
Dulcinea, his bony nag of a horse Rocinante, his mistaking an inn for a castle
and freeing criminals whom he believes are unjustly imprisoned and oppressed (they
proceed to rob him and Sancho), and his final renunciation of his madness and
his death.
Most of these incidents
occur in the earlier and better-known parts of the book. The tale revels in
the wordy digressions familiar in older books, such as Gargantua and
Pantagruel or Le Morte D’Arthur, which delighted readers of the time
but are not as suited to modern attention spans and ‘snappy’ narrative. Still,
the story persists as a fable throughout the culture, referenced and retold
time and again. Here are just a few such artifacts that I own.
From the stage play Man of
La Mancha:
G. K. Chesterton’s The
Return of Don Quixote:
They Might Be Giants ("They look like windmills, but they might be giants."):
The Man Who Killed Don
Quixote:
This poster Mike had:
This leather bottle Kenny
gave me:
This birthday card John made
me:
A short story by Jorge Luis
Borges:
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