April 25, 2005

• "I wasn't scared. I have known how to read for a long time. I wanted to do it," he said just after his reading, heh...this from a six year old.
• Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes, or Don Quixote by Pierre Menard?
• all is for the best in this best of all possible worlds....
• ... or is that unto the young Candide? Pangloss is everywhere...
• I have reflected that it is permissible to see in this "final" Quixote a kind of palimpsest, through which the traces--tenuous but not indecipherable--of our friend's "previous" writing should be translucently visible. Unfortunately, only a second Pierre Menard, inverting the other's work, would be able to exhume and revive those lost Troys . . . Sure and it's a great story and all.
• I LOVE Don Quixote. I guess I looked out, but I read a decent translation in high school (don't remember which) but I remember laughing out loud while reading the tale and will always remember the first time I read the novel. And there was he characteristic way of the two characters that were a great frames for my world, either the earthy, simple Sancho Panza, or the poetic, metaphoric, romantic Don Quixote. I really and truly love this story.
• the tvtome guide for Don Coyote & Sancho Panda has an opening for an editor, if anyone here is interested.
• I've started it about 3 times, but always fail...shame on me. I have, to my credit, though, read and enjoyed Moby Dick, if that makes me less reprehensible in anyone's eyes.
• As it happens DQ is very near the top of my to-read pile, nice coincidence that this year is its big anniversary. I'll have to make a start this week. And kfisto: No, not really. God that book's tedious.
• I found the tedium to be a literary metaphor for the years-long whaling voyages themselves...
• I preferred Tirant Lo Blanc.
• I preferred the ill-fated Fulton/Pepe/Gilliam abridged version.
• Personal opinion: Find I had one thousand times rather reread Cervantes cover to cover than any of the tedious and depressing works of Herman Melville even once. And that goes double for Henry (King of Dullards) James. But life is cruel.
• I have an abridged version of Mody Dick that condenses each chapter into a single line. Chapter 1: I'm Ishmael. Chapter 2: Pubs, eh? Chapter 3: Sleeping with guys is queer, unless it's Queequeg. etc. Got me through American Lit 101.
• I'm talking bollocks of course
• My sympathies, quidnunc. First I read Moby Dick because when I was very young I would read anything and there it was, don't ye know, on a shelf in front of me. I kept waiting for the story to be about the whale, as I recall, but it never did. I finished it only because one of my older brothers* said I would never be able to do it. Same bastard who told me it was a story about bout a whale. I wented Free Willie and instead I got Ahab. *low cunning runs in my family
• Well I liked it.
• From a place in La Mancha - whose name I don't wish to recall - I stab at thee!
• The first time I read Moby Dick, it was in a high school English class where the teacher told us to skip the chapters on whaling and just follow the story. The second time, it was in a history class where the teacher wanted us to skip the story and concentrate on the whaling chapters because of their historical value. Moby Dick is all things to all people... but I still don't like it. (Have you read Ahab's Wife? Not a bad read, and it really helps if you've read MD beforehand.
• cynnbad, yes you were alluding to Voltaire's Candide definitely. But I've never read D.Q. - maybe it's a paraphrase from there as well. I believe I ought to put D.Q. on my toread list. I saw recently that the Spanish govt. had spent a fortune on signs etc. mapping out a Don Quixote walking tour around the country. If anyone's going there they might want to practise their google-fu - maybe worth an FPP in itself.
• You know, bees, you ought not to give up on Melville altogether without having a go at "Bartleby the scrivener". It's about these zombie Tyrannosaurs.
• Alas, I have, Pleggers, but it fails to overcome my heartfelt dislike of Melville. It's online here for anyone who wants to give it a go.
• I read Moby Dick in 48 seconds.