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Title: Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes, Edith Grossman, Harold Bloom ISBN: 0-06-018870-7 Publisher: Ecco Pub. Date: 21 October, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.52 (21 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Faulkner's Favorite
Comment: Faulkner said Don Quixote was his favorite book and that, along with The Bible, he dipped into it yearly. I'm not sure what Cervantes would have made of some of Faulkner's more troublesome work, but the world has designated Don Quixote the Father of the Modern Novel and perhaps the greatest novel ever. I'm a fan of this book and a habitual (some would say neurotic) comparer of translations. Since I don't read of speak Spanish, I have to rely on the English translations that have been published. There are three that are worthwhile: Ormsby's, Samuel Putnam's and now Edith Grossman's. Grossman, who is the translator of Garcia Marquez's books into English, has produced a translation that's contemporary and authentic--somehow, not an oxymoron. It has a fresher feel than Putnam's (the translation Nabokov used when teaching the book), though I wouldn't say it supplants Putnam. If you're looking for a copy of Don Quixote in English, Grossman's translation is a good first choice. She manages to maintain the feel of the language Cervantes wrote in (as far as I can tell) yet her translation, as the NY Times reviewer noted, is as readable as the latest novel from Philip Roth. You can't go wrong with Putnam or Grossman, but on this one, I have to give the nod to Grossman.
Rating: 5
Summary: A spectacular translation
Comment: I first read Quixote seriously in the Putnam, and was completely swept away by it - the prose was just as readable as it is here, and Putnam communicated a love for the text in his notes (as well as a hatred for the translators that had butchered it before) that was a nice accompaniment to the actual story. Grossman's language is smoother, and I suppose Putnam's prose does have the dust of fifty odd years on it - but that isn't necessarily a bad thing. I don't mind if an old book reads a bit like an old book: slightly dated English gives a book a certain flavor. I like Putnam for the same reason I enjoy Maude's translations of Tolstoy. Grossman does write a better sentence, I think, and she certainly doesn't make the book any more colloquial than Cervantes did - although I was annoyed at her constantly having Sancho say Wassup. Putnam's Quixote, incidentally, is filled with notes: more notes than most people who aren't scholars will want. Every one of Sancho's proverbs is explained (and those aren't exactly the comic high point of the book, either) and he constantly takes potshots at Motteux and other translations, a la Nabokov when he translated A Hero of Our Time. They're sort of funny, but eventually you want him to get out of the way of Quixote, which is what one actually wants to read - not the translator's thoughts. Then again, a note can easily be skipped, and it's nice to have the extensive information that Putnam packs in, about the historical situation in Spain, potential variant readings of a passage, all the brouhaha about the fake second half of Don Quixote that actually ends up having a part in the book - and lots of other stuff.Still, a good translation of a book that can be read a hundred times in a hundred different ways is always worthwhile. Don Quixote truly never stops being funny or sad (especially when you know which parts can be skipped the second and third time around) - people who expect a dreary classic will be surprised to find an author that is as relevant today as he ever was.
Rating: 5
Summary: 35 Excellent CDs
Comment: Plenty of other readers have reviewed the content of the book. I'll limit my remarks to those specially pertinent to this audio edition.
This recording is one of my favorite recorded books. George Guidall, as always, performs very well as a reader, taking up the many voices of the characters of this novel with great skill, clarity, and expression. I never found my interest flagging. The thirty-five CDs of this set are a great achievement.
The only problem I found in this set of CDs is that some of the information printed on them is not correct:
1. Each CD is marked "Tracks Every 3 Minutes," which is completely false. Each approximately 70-minute CD is divided into eight to fourteen tracks of varying lengths corresponding to natural breaks in the text.
2. Each CD is marked "First printed in 1605." This notice is only true in the case of the first 17 CDs. In truth, the last eighteen CDs, which contain Part II, should note that the text was first printed in 1615.
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Title: Living to Tell the Tale by GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ, EDITH GROSSMAN ISBN: 1400041341 Publisher: Knopf Pub. Date: 04 November, 2003 List Price(USD): $26.95 |
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Title: Goya by ROBERT HUGHES ISBN: 0394580281 Publisher: Knopf Pub. Date: 11 November, 2003 List Price(USD): $45.00 |
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Title: The Early Stories : 1953-1975 by JOHN UPDIKE ISBN: 1400040728 Publisher: Knopf Pub. Date: 21 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
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Title: The Peloponnesian War by Donald Kagan ISBN: 0670032115 Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: 08 May, 2003 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
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Title: Swann's Way by Marcel Proust, Lydia Davis, Christopher Prendergast ISBN: 067003245X Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: 11 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $27.95 |
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