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Is Don Quixote Unreadable?

#82: April - May 2010 (Fiction)
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DWill

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Re: Is Don Quixote Unreadable?

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Suzanne wrote:This one has gotten the better of me. I have tried. I believe I read "War and Peace" twice in a shorter period of time than it has taken me to read 400 pages of DQ.

I feel as though I am reading the same thing over and over again. DQ sees an opportunity, seizes it, gets beaten up, everyone calls him crazy, Sancho gets frustrated. Then, the cycle repeats. "Wash, rinse, repeat". I find myself reading the words, just to get through it, not good. But I know, if I put it down, I will never pick it up again. What a dilemma!

I just can't make myself take my place mark out of this book. The comments from everyone, especially Robert and DWill are great, I should be enjoying this book, but it just ain't happenin. I really don't want to banish it to the "don't want to read it, but want to finish it" pile, which needs dusting, but I am very close to doing it.
No shame, Suzanne. You went through William Faulkner no problem, so it's not as though you're in the habit of backing down from a challenge. Gave the Don a very fair hearing, too. Sometimes "ain't happenin'" is what we have to accept, especially when the book is reminding us of a shampoo bottle!

DWill
Last edited by DWill on Thu May 27, 2010 5:49 pm, edited 1 time in total.
bleachededen

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Re: Is Don Quixote Unreadable?

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Suzanne wrote:This one has gotten the better of me. I have tried. I believe I read "War and Peace" twice in a shorter period of time than it has taken me to read 400 pages of DQ.
Maybe it's just not your time yet, Suzanne, like it's not my time yet to read Les Miserables. ;)

That being said, I understand your frustration, because I made it through Don Quixote by sheer force of will. I decided I was going to read it once and for all and be done with it, and by the time I'd reached Part II I felt I couldn't back down, even though I wanted to very badly, because I kept saying, "If I made it this far, I might as well finish the blasted thing." But I had stopped enjoying it long before that.

At some point we have to recognize and accept our limitations. Not everyone has to read Don Quixote, and I harbor no ill will towards them, and even possibly wish I was still among their numbers, and had not read it. :-P

It was certainly a learning experience, I'll give it that. And the discussions here helped keep me going, knowing there was someone I could share my thoughts with, even if it was just my hatred for the book.

Well done on War and Peace x2, though. I don't think I'd make it through page one of that book once, let alone twice! Bravo! :clap2:
bleachededen

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Re: Is Don Quixote Unreadable?

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DWill wrote:No shame, Suzanne. You went through William Faulkner no problem, so it's not as though you're in the habit of backing down from a challenge. Gave the Don a very fair hearing, too. Sometimes "ain't happenin'" is what we have to accept, especially when the book is reminding us of a shampoo bottle!
It depends on the shampoo bottle, DWill. The "Herbal Essences" line of shampoo and conditioner bottles have odd facts on them in the form of question and answer. Each set of shampoo and conditioner bottles (i.e. smoothing, curl enhancing, volume boosting, what have you, the different color coded bottles) has a question on the shampoo bottle, with the corresponding answer on the conditioner bottle, and a question on the conditioner bottle with a corresponding answer on the shampoo bottle. So sometimes reading a shampoo bottle really is more exciting than reading Cervantes! :lol:
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Suzanne

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Re: Is Don Quixote Unreadable?

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Robert Tulip wrote:Hi, I finished Don Quixote last week and loved it.
Well, la de da for you!

DWill wrote:No shame, Suzanne. You went through William Faulkner no problem, so it's not as though you're in the habit of backing down from a challenge.
Yes for shame on me! Ohhhh! I'll stick with it.
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Re: Is Don Quixote Unreadable?

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If I imagine the variety of books available to read at the present date versus what was likely available four hundred years ago. I could almost understand the appeal of DQ for both generations. On the one hand you have a story that was written at a time when library shelves must have been sparse. On the other you have a book we've all read or are reading, for good or bad curiosity got us. I thought the book was readable. it was slow at times, at others it was a page turner. Even though it was a translation I read, the gist of some of the themes I think still comes through well enough to appreciate a good story.
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DWill

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Re: Is Don Quixote Unreadable?

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bleachededen wrote:
DWill wrote:No shame, Suzanne. You went through William Faulkner no problem, so it's not as though you're in the habit of backing down from a challenge. Gave the Don a very fair hearing, too. Sometimes "ain't happenin'" is what we have to accept, especially when the book is reminding us of a shampoo bottle!
It depends on the shampoo bottle, DWill. The "Herbal Essences" line of shampoo and conditioner bottles have odd facts on them in the form of question and answer. Each set of shampoo and conditioner bottles (i.e. smoothing, curl enhancing, volume boosting, what have you, the different color coded bottles) has a question on the shampoo bottle, with the corresponding answer on the conditioner bottle, and a question on the conditioner bottle with a corresponding answer on the shampoo bottle. So sometimes reading a shampoo bottle really is more exciting than reading Cervantes! :lol:
Wicked, wicked, wicked! I probably have had these shampoo bottles with me in the shower and never have known they can be so instructive. Can't read without my glasses, and whatever the wife and daughters have put in there is usually a mystery. It's all I can do to figure out whether the stuff makes a lather or not, whether to put it on my head at all, or even whether to eat it (if the word yoghurt appears in big letters). I admit I just give up sometimes and reach for the bar of soap.
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Robert Tulip

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Re: Is Don Quixote Unreadable?

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You people are trashy. Don Quixote presents deep symbolic human archetypes of human identity - the visionary dreamer, the lazy fool, the indifferent cynic. Shampoo is just a marketing gimmick that is a waste of money compared to soap.
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Re: Is Don Quixote Unreadable?

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Robert Tulip wrote:You people are trashy. Don Quixote presents deep symbolic human archetypes of human identity - the visionary dreamer, the lazy fool, the indifferent cynic. Shampoo is just a marketing gimmick that is a waste of money compared to soap.
I am not trashy! I was just pointing out that some shampoo bottles have interesting tidbits on them and trying to make a joke. I agree that Cervantes presents many of the story archetypes we now know very well, but that doesn't mean we can't understand that and poke some fun at a book that, for many of us, is outdated and hard to read. We mean no offense, Robert, and are not suggesting that this book wasn't innovative, we were just having a bit of fun, and remember that just because it is a classic and was innovative, doesn't mean it will be enjoyable to everyone, then or now. As they say, "There's no accounting for taste."
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Re: Is Don Quixote Unreadable?

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This is an amusing conversation about Cervantes’ readability and shampoo bottles. I think shampoo bottles are a good icon of our times, they tell us a lot about ourselves. Maybe they could be stretched to religious icon? I know Monty Python references have been done before in this discussion, but please excuse one more. Monty Python had fun with religious iconic objects in the Life of Brian with 2 common objects of the time, the gourd and the sandal. Brian runs away from the hysterical mob who believe he is the messiah and they begin to worship and idolize the gourd and sandal he drops along the way, convinced that these are signs from God. So, in our time, what better ubiquitous object to drop along the way than the shampoo bottle? Makes me think of the Gods Must be Crazy.

Shampoo bottles aside, I think DQ is readable but I am reading in a particular way, a slow food way, wandering through the book slowly like DQ and Sancho wander through their adventures. It doesn’t matter to me if I ever finish the book. Actually, I know I won’t. I can see some interesting, possible meanings to his work that go beyond repetitive, comedic episodes, some of which have been discussed here, and that is good enough for me. And really, this book has been around for 400 years and studied to death, so could all those scholars and readers be wrong?
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Re: Is Don Quixote Unreadable?

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bleachededen wrote:
Robert Tulip wrote:You people are trashy. Don Quixote presents deep symbolic human archetypes of human identity - the visionary dreamer, the lazy fool, the indifferent cynic. Shampoo is just a marketing gimmick that is a waste of money compared to soap.
I am not trashy! I was just pointing out that some shampoo bottles have interesting tidbits on them and trying to make a joke. I agree that Cervantes presents many of the story archetypes we now know very well, but that doesn't mean we can't understand that and poke some fun at a book that, for many of us, is outdated and hard to read. We mean no offense, Robert, and are not suggesting that this book wasn't innovative, we were just having a bit of fun, and remember that just because it is a classic and was innovative, doesn't mean it will be enjoyable to everyone, then or now. As they say, "There's no accounting for taste."
And equally, I can poke fun at anyone with the temerity to criticise the peerless summit of knight errantry. Don Quixote only gets better. I think if you don't enjoy it you should stop reading, as that is a sign that perhaps you are missing something, have other things on your mind, and may be better waiting until later. I completely disagree that Don Quixote is outdated. It stands at the hinge point between the medieval world of Christendom and the modern world of capitalism, in a location where the multicultural problem of interfaith relations between Christianity and Islam was a pressing political priority. The critique of both old and new remains totally relevant in the modern world. The cynics who condemn Don Quixote as a fool do not see, in the words of the Psalmist, that without vision the people perish. Don Quixote's vision may be wrong, but there is gold among the dross. As his near contemporary Kepler said, we should not throw out the baby with the bathwater. There! I have mashed almost as many cliches into one paragraph as Sancho Panza! I will have to start a new thread on the proverbs of the lazy fool, peace be upon him.

Just on Monty Python, I am growing more convinced that those Cambridge loons pilfered their best ideas from Cervantes. Towards the end of the book, in the restaurant at the end of the universe, we find the very model and source for the cheese shop.
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