summer

Summer Vacation, Day 10: Cervantes

/ J. Thorp / 1 Comment

As I said late last night (or early this morning as the case may have been), I finally finished Don Quixote. Great book, full of poetry and humor and provocation. The story itself provokes: consider the fact that a well-to-do couple stages elaborate scenarios to engage Don Quixote’s madness and Sancho Panza’s simplicity, and they do this in order to amuse themselves. Cruel, right?

On the flip side, there are moments in the scenarios in which our heroes are as alive and happy as they’ve ever been. The cruelty is dulled by the fact that the heroes don’t seem to be experiencing it as cruelty. (Although a few times I wondered if Quixote was truly mad, or just “living his dream” …)

From a writerly perspective, it provokes, too. Cervantes brings himself (personally, and under various guises) into the narrative and draws attention to his craft. Audacious! Plus, my translation kept my head spinning with questions about the original text and the challenge of translating humor. When Don Quixote uses the word “syntax” and Sancho replies something like he’ll regret the “sin” and take a pass on the “tax” – was that a play on words in the original Spanish? Homophones don’t translate, do they?

Beyond these points, here’s my Top Three Things To Love List for Don Quixote:

  1. A Man Living By An Outdated Code. One of my favorite literary and film themes, e.g., Mr. Blue and Ghost Dog.

  2. You Always Mock the One You Love. To me, the love of Cervantes for his subject matter is clear. All of the tales within the tale are well done, layering romance atop romance. The bad poetry is appropriately bad, and the good, appropriately lovely. The chivalry-hating priest cannot bring himself to burn all the books, and those who seek to help the knight to sanity mourn his madness when it passes. I’m writing a fractured fairy tale right now, so I like this approach.

  3. What Is the Nature of Madness? Don Quixote’s lunacy-versus-lucidity was interesting, but I loved the more subtle madness of Sancho and his wife. Who hasn’t seen that PowerBall jackpot and dreamed of what they’d do with it? These two (and DQ to boot) roll the dice, then get caught up in the bounces!

Complaints? Only the length, but it helps to keep in mind that the two volumes were published 10 years apart. People who read the first volume were hungry for more. Today, to paraphrase my good friend Jinglebob, we are fed, not a forkful of hay, but the whole load at once.

Summer Vacation, Day 9: Pleasantville

/ J. Thorp / 2 Comments

I finished Don Quixote tonight. The end of the book (and especially the reactions of his sane friends to the knight’s sudden return to sanity, made me think of something I wrote when we lived in Michigan.

Pleasantville
He waves from the walk as I’m pumping gas — a buzz cut and a smile. His hand is insistent, fingers flapping for a response. I smile and nod and raise a hand. It’s enough; he steps toward the curb well-pleased. We all know this one — the kid who waves to everyone; who always says, “Good Morning” and means it — who wouldn’t mind if you took the time to answer his “What’s up?” or “How you doing?” Ours has Downs — but what of that? He has a thousand friends, too, in a village of less. Watch him as he walks, smiling and waving to everyone — the fellow stacking wheel-barrows in front of the hardware; the old woman weeding in her broad hat and yellow gloves; the red-faced sot righting himself outside the bar; the cars, pickups and semis — smiling and waving like folks care, like we’re all in one of those public service announcements from the ’50s, where everyone smiles and waves and does the right thing. We all poke fun at them now, but it works for him, he’s living it. Ah-ha, you say, but he doesn’t know. He’s ignorant; he’ll go through his life believing he matters because a stranger said hello; because no one was willing to break the spell — to which I reply, “And?”

J. Thorp
04 April 02

I’ll post more on the book soon, Coach. The Great Gatsby is next.

Summer Vacation, Day 8: Lazy Bird?

/ J. Thorp / 2 Comments

Saw another eagle as I drove to work today. The radio was running a news story on the man-made lake in Wisconsin that broke its banks and drained, helping to flood the nearby river and sweeping away a number of lakeside houses. Now the lake is just a muddy depression with numerous gasping fish …

What struck me this time, as the eagle swept over the shoreline of a lake beside the freeway, is that raptors have been doing their thing for a long time now. Many of them have adapted to whatever chaos we cause below. Probably the birds around the Wisconsin Dells are enjoying easy pickings in that drained lake. Flexible and opportunistic, but not necessarily ambitious. Maybe ambition is our problem …

I could be lazier.* Could you?

* * * * *

*But perhaps not much.