catapult magazine

catapult magazine
 

discussion

Don Quixote

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mrsanniep
Aug 01 2003
05:28 am

I’m having a difficult time getting motivated to read “Don Quixote,” which my book club is discussing next month. It’s not hard reading, I’m just not (at first glance) all that interested in the story. Has anyone read it and has great things to say about it? I need to get more fired up about it.

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grant
Aug 01 2003
06:29 am

I’ve been fired up to read Don Quixote a few times, but have not acted on that impulse yet. Supposedly, it is the first great novel, and a reflection on story itself. Don Quixote is both a character and the book himself. He goes through his world looking to find the rules by which he should live and then tries to act accordingly, in keeping with the laws of the book itself.

As Michel Foucault says in “The Order of Things”, Quixote’s “adventures will be a deciphering of the world: a diligent search over the entire surface of the earth for the forms that will prove that what books say is true. Each exploit must be a proof: it consists, not in a real triumph—which is why victory is not really important—but in an attempt to transform reality into a sign. Into a sign that the signs of language really are in conformity with things themselves. Don Quixote reads the world in order to prove his books.”

Maybe this won’t persuade you to want to read Don Quixote, but I think this would be a great book to read in a book club. It was necessary, at the early stages of the printing press, for someone to write a book that proved books were true representations of human life. And that’s what Cervantes did. Otherwise, novels might have become merely sentimental pornography for French housewives.

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cvk
Aug 01 2003
01:50 pm

I have never read Don Q but a good friend of mine picked up a new translation sort of on a whim this spring and has been reading me bits and pieces since. She isn’t an avid reader and is finding it a bit of a big undertaking but she is really enjoying ut and finds it hilarious. We share books so I am waiting my turn for this tome. I will find out which translation this is if you want to know. Otherwise will give you my imput once I start it.

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mrsanniep
Aug 02 2003
10:22 am

I’m reading the Penguin Classics edition. I just bought it. I thought having a lovely-packaged edition might inspire me to open the cover. I started reading it yesterday afternoon. It is actually kind of funny (the book, not the fact that I started reading it).