Monthly Archives: August 2019

Miguel de Cervantes – Don Quixote

I read the Edith Grossman translation, generally the best-regarded in English. Cervantes’ style is easy enough that many Spanish students will read Cervantes in the original; my skills are no longer up to the task, if they ever were at all. Even in translation, Don Quixote is hilarious, tragic, and surprisingly postmodern. Quixote is obsessed with the adventure books in his library to point of losing his marbles. Convinced he is a noble errant knight, he goes off on heroic quests–“errant” being a term that describes more than Quixote’s mental state. An errant knight serves no king or noble; he is an independent operator.

Quixote tilts at windmills, confuses inns for castles, innkeepers’ daughters for princesses, prostitutes for noble ladies, and repeatedly gets beaten up in embarrassing ways. Sancho, his saner “squire,” tries and fails to be a voice of reason. But despite his occasional caustic remarks and threats to leave Quixote and go home to his family, Sancho clearly has some affection for his errant master, which adds a note of warmth to a story that could use it.

As a writer, Cervantes is fond of genre-hopping. He regularly takes breaks from adventure farce and has Quixote stay in the background while other characters act out stories of intrigue, romance, and more, often in humorously overdramatic fashion. Merlin, the wizard from King Arthur mythology, even puts in an appearance in part two.

Part two is actually a sequel, published ten years after part one. Another author published an unauthorized sequel in the interim, which may have prompted Cervantes to write his own official sequel. This controversy led to a type of postmodern irony that wouldn’t appear again in literature until the 20^th century. Quixote, Sancho, and the other characters are aware of Part 1 and their literary fame. Quixote even wishes aloud that its author had left out some of the more humiliating beatings he took. The other characters chuckle at this while taking issue with their own portrayals. They also throw a few jabs at the unauthorized sequel. Cervantes, referring to himself as “the author,” even pokes some fun at himself. Near the end of the book, before a high seas adventure, Quixote even visits a print shop where one of the books being printed is part two of Don Quixote, adding further humor. As far as unofficial national novels go, Spain has done well in choosing not just a tragedy dressed as a comedy, but a clever one that spans multiple genres, uses almost every literary device and conceit Cervantes could think of, and foreshadowed modern literature and its self-aware postmodern turn.

Isaac Asimov – The Stars, Like Dust

Not the most graceful fiction, nor are the characters well developed. But the story gets better if one knows a little backstory first. This is the first novel of a three-part series written early in Asimov’s career. It was something of a prequel to his Foundation series, Asimov’s best-known fiction. The story of The Stars, Like Dust is loosely based on the history of the Golden Horde, a Mongol faction led by Batu Khan, grandson of Genghis Khan; the larger Foundation series is loosely modeled on the Roman Empire’s decline. It is filled with infighting and intrigue. That said, the surprise plot twist in the end firmly establishes this book as a product of mid-20th century America. This book is better as a slice of mid-20^th-century American culture than as a serious work of science fiction. Perhaps not coincidentally, Asimov called this book his least favorite novel.

Jonathan Swift – Gulliver’s Travels

The classic satire holds up well. In the first of four parts, Gulliver visits the Lilliputians. Besides the obvious lessons about cultural differences, there is also some amusing ribaldry, as when Gulliver gets into legal trouble for putting out a Lilliputian fire by urinating on it, and flooding the tiny town as a result.

In part two he sees the opposite side of the coin with the Brobdingnagians, a race of giants, though mercifully minus the peeing. In part three he bounces around among several different nations, giving Swift the opportunity to poke fun at philosophers and other elites, and for some reason Japan, possibly because it is an actual place. Part four gives us the word “yahoo,” which gives Swift ample opportunity to make fun of ordinary people’s prejudices and habits. When Gulliver is briefly home between adventures, the casual dismissiveness with which he treats his wife and children is an early example of shock value humor. Gulliver barely acknowledges their existence beyond conceiving a new child on each return. Nobody is spared, and nobody is a saint, which is likely the source of Swift’s enduring appeal.