I said silly and pointless, not vapid and vomit inducing.

Information on The Female Quixote. You can't tell a book by a summary, but I'd say this is a promising premise, at least. And if you want to imitate Don Quixote, write a long book.

Literature Annotations

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Lennox, Charlotte
The Female Quixote: Or, the Adventures of Arabella

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Genre Novel (426 pp.)
Keywords Doctor-Patient Relationship, History of Medicine, Mental Illness, Nature, Obsession, Society
Summary Arabella is a young lady who has lived for a long while at her father’s secluded country home. She spends her time reading romances (in 18th century Britain, "romance" meant fictional works posing as historical accounts of tragic heroines, leibestods, and undying affection--usually French in origin).

She has come to believe the romances to be true and models her behavior after the rigid rules of womanhood contained in them. Moreover, she interprets others’ action or outside events according to romantic expectations.

When Arabella finally goes into society, all are struck with her wisdom and beauty, but are baffled by her behavior and constant references to various romantic characters. She scorns her persistent suitor, Mr. Glanville, since he does not, at first, pursue her according to the rules of romance. He neither pines away, nor allows her to send him to the far ends of the earth to think of her without hope, forever. He soon learns to humor her caprices.

Arabella goes through many adventures all of which depend on her obsession. When she falls ill after diving into a river to save her honor, a doctor is called in to treat her. Learning of her obsession, he resolves to cure her. Using cold logic, he dissolves Arabella’s misconceptions.

Commentary The doctor is the hero of this novel. He is the only one capable of sustaining an argument in the face of Arabella’s notions. Arabella responds to him because he does present rational explanations for why she must be wrong rather than just telling her that she is wrong as the other characters do. The novel is soundly of The Enlightenment. Old beliefs and practices guided by rules must fade away in favor of beliefs and practices guided by natural reason.
Publisher Oxford Univ. Press
Edition 1989
Place Published New York
Miscellaneous First published: 1752
Annotated by Moore, Pamela
Date of Entry 08/08/94

bleachededen wrote:I said silly and pointless, not vapid and vomit inducing.

Fair do's.

And "The Female Quixote: Or, the Adventures of Arabella" sounds entertaining. I'll probably end up looking it up.

I've had enough Quixotes, thank you very much.

I haven't read "Don Quixote" for the fact being... well it's huge. I don't think I could handle something og that size right now.

Don Quixote rocks... the man was a genius. I'd recommend getting a really good audio version of it of the weight and style of the tome makes you feel faint...

That's a great recommendation to have a version with enough paunch and flare of the tome make me feel dizzy. Exactly. =D

I repeat: I have had enough Quixotes, thank you very much.

My count is 204.

"The Female Don Quioxte"? Oh, the images this is putting in my head! I think we should read it, I really do. Slip it right into the "DQ" discussion.

I found "Cloud Atlas", David Mitchell to be surprising. I really thought I was one out of maybe ten people in the world that has read this one. Maybe the list maker was one of the ten too. But, "The God of Small Things", wow, one of my favorites! But, I don't know anyone who has read this one either.

I was happy to see, "The Corrections" on the list. I will admit, I loved, loved this one, loved it so much, I wrote a fan letter to Franzen. And you know what, he wrote me back!

Got to say, some of those titles brought back great memories, many of them I read 20 years ago. When you look at the list carefully, you can see that the books listed all have different writing styles, gimmicks, and the just plain oddities that were popular. It's kinda like a pulp fiction list. "The Stone Diaries"? This is a gimmick novel, and it won the Pulitzer. "Interview with a Vampire"?, again, gimmick. "The Fear of Flying"? Hmmm? But, I read all three, so I guess I get sucked into gimmicks.

President Camacho wrote:Maybe one day I'll try Light in August. I seem to develop a prejudice against an author if I read one of their books that is highly acclaimed and turns out to be not to my liking.

You should read "Light in August" Pres. It is different from "The Sound and the Fury", I know how you feel about that one. The writing style is more frank and tangible, different from "As I Lay Dying", or, "Sound and Fury".

I feel like I'm the only one who liked, The Sound and the Fury... but I actually liked Light in August. It was pretty different so I would recommend trying it out in order to give Faulkner a fair chance. Now I feel like I've said exactly what Suzanne has said... well...