Don Quixote - Miguel de Cervantes

"He so immersed himself in those romances that he spent whole days and nights over his books, and thus with little sleeping and much reading his brains dried up to such a degree that he lost the use of his reason"

I must preface this post by mentioning that I haven't actually read Don Quixote. Now before you all lambast me for writing about something that I haven't read let me remind you that English majors are professionals at that very thing. But really, despite the fact that I haven't read Don Quixote (I assure you, it is near the top of my 'when-I'm-done-with-my-masters' list) I am well aware of its literary impact and artistic significance. But first lets describe the books themselves.

I have two copies of Cervantes' master work. The first was a fantastic impulse buy from the wonderful Barnes and Noble imprint. This version is a huge, backpack-defying tome, worth it not only for its price but moreso because it includes those wonderful Gustave Dore engravings I've discussed before in this blog. This will likely be the book I'll read when I get around to it, despite the fact that if I read it in public I'll likely get the question readers of big books often get when reading such tomes: "Are you reading the Bible?" (Can anyone explain why 'large book' automatically means 'Bible' to so many people?).

The second version of Don Quixote would be somewhat more difficult to read as it is a complete Spanish edition. Despite the fact that I've retained my Spanish fairly well since high school I don't think this particular language ability is quite up to par with Cervantes'. What makes this book significant is that it was purchased for me by my sister Tamara who spent a semester abroad in Madrid. My family and I had the good fortune to take nearly three weeks to visit her last year. This brings me to my justification for blogging on a book I haven't read.

There is so much about reading books that is augmented by context. Stories, by nature, are meant to carry you to another time and place and allow your imagination to recreate something with which you may not be familiar; literature brings far-off lands to you in a way that no picture or movie can and while there is much to be said for such an experience having context begins to make that experience particularly literary. During our trip to Spain we spent a few days driving through the countryside of La Mancha and I made sure to keep my eye out for windmills. As it turned out, Cervantes' picaresque knight practically came to me. Not only did we happen upon a fantastic statue of Don Quixote himself, but one of our stops was a castle surrounded by period windmills. In fact, my bookmark for my future reading experience will be a Spanish national parks brochure that has a Don Quixote countryside tour map printed within its leaves...so yeah, I have context, which I expect will undoubtedly enhance my experience of one of the greatest tales of blind idealism in the face of a world that is slowly turning its back on the old codes of honor.

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Cervantes, Miguel de. Don Quixote. Trans. David Stuart Davies. [city?] Barnes and Noble. 2007
Cervantes, Miguel de. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quixote de La Mancha. [city?] Lunwerg. [date?]

Alice in Wonderland review postponed

For the sake of continuity I would have liked to discuss the new Tim Burton film for this week's blog but I just haven't found the time (or the marital cooperation) to go and see it. I will probably just end up moving on this coming week but I will keep you posted whenever I get a chance to see it.
In the meantime, wæs hæl!

Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass - Lewis Carroll

"Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe."

In light of the new Tim Burton film I though it providential that I have arrived at the letter 'C' in my semi-alphabetical exploration of my bookshelf. Hopefully next week's post will be about the film which I hope to have seen by then but today I am writing of the particularly confusing opus of Lewis Carroll's known as Alice in Wonderland (and we'll go ahead and include Through the Looking-glass as well).

This book is one of the most special books in my collection as it was a gift from my late grandmother, the woman to whom I can attribute a great portion of my love for reading. What's more, as you will see from the picture below, she seems to have anticipated my love of reading and of books before anyone else. When I was quite young Grandma Jane used to pick me up from school every Wednesday, bring me home, and read with me. Unbeknown to me each week she had spent nearly the whole week prior deliberating over what book she would read with me. Though I have books that are older and even ones that have been in the family longer it is particularly heartwarming to know that this was the first ever book in my collection (by that standard I have been collecting books for 25 years!).

Since I've started at the beginning so far I have to not that the first experience of this book that I ever had were its pictures. I'm not sure of John Tenniel or Henry Holiday's status among readers of Carroll but their art has defined for me the quintessential look for the book's pinafored protagonist. Before I could understand the book (an ironic statement which I will discuss below) I used to flip through its pages just examining the confusing but expressive features of each of the strange characters depicted there. I even remember wondering how the Jabberwock fit into the plot. Now that I have read both Alice books, I smile wryly at this notion.

When I first read Alice I could not help but hope that there was something really important going on, as if the convoluted plot and colorful cast held some deep secret that could be unlocked with the proper key. I have since been dissuaded from this opinion (which I still feel is a loss-of-innocence moment for me) and rather consider wonderland and its inhabitants to merely represent an early exploration of modernism or absurdism in which the point is that there isn't one. Being at this point a medievalist and tending to study literature with a sort of Ent-ish view of the written word (medieval writers don't tend to say anything unless its worth taking a long time to say) Carroll's narrative is a bit disappointing and even somewhat annoying. That said; I want to clarify that it doesn't make me love Alice any less since her and her hatters and mock turtles are a fun crew for leisurely reading. But if someone out there has this key that I mentioned that will unlock the absurdist mystery I would love to hear it.
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Carroll, Lewis. The Best of Lewis Carroll. [city?]: Castle, 1983