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Title: Don Quixote de La Mancha by Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra, Samuel Putnam ISBN: 0-679-60286-0 Publisher: Modern Library Pub. Date: 28 July, 1998 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.45 (86 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: 4 and 1/2 Stars
Comment: One of the great classics of world literature, Don Quixote is very often called the greatest novel of all-time. Many also see it as the first modern novel, the precursor to all novels that have come since; some, indeed, even call it the first true novel ever written. Certainly, it is both world-famous -- almost all people, whether they've tackled this 1,000+page monster or not, seem to know about the "terrifying and never-before-heard of adventure of the windmills" -- and extremely influential upon all literature that has come since. The great Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky thought it was the best thing ever written; it was clearly one of Mark Twain's primary inspirations for Huck Finn.
The book has endured and remained popular and influential for four hundred years for several reasons. For one, the character of Don Quixote himself is immortal. One of the most famous characters in all literature, he has appeared in various forms throughout the centuries -- on the page, on the stage, on the screen. Clearly a huge influence upon a multitude of subsequent literary characters, he is one of the great archetypes in literature. Also, the story itself works on several levels. On one level, it is a highly comic adventure that can be read and enjoyed by everyone; a hugely-popular both upon release and still today, this is probably the main reason why it has lasted four centuries. Even at this later date, the book contains scenes that are laugh-out-loud funny, its jokes running the gamut from the most base level of slapstick to ringing burlesque and satire. Despite the novel's length, it is a very entertaining book and rarely slow: it can actually be an exciting and fast-paced read, if one chooses to view it merely as an adventure. However, on a deeper level, the novel, fascinatingly, does several different things at once, and all very well. To begin with, it is a truly immortal satire, both on the outdated and hopelessly idealistic chivalric code itself and on the romantic books of knight-errantry that proclaimed their virtues and were extremely popular at the time Cervantes wrote this work. Wit is abundant and ever-present.
As an author, Cervantes clearly had several tricks up his proverbial sleeve when writing this; he employs literary devices so charming, amusing, and inventive that they have never been equaled since. Indeed, this book was so very far ahead of its time that it makes many of the supposedly revolutionary post-modern novels seem mainstream and absolutely traditional by comparison. For, after all, this is a book about books; it is, thus, the ultimate self-reflexive text. As the introduction in this edition points out, the book actually tells two stories: that of Don Quixote, and that of the novel's composition itself. The number of self-references made in it can only be called ingenious. Several circumstances informed this. The mammoth book, as we know it today, was originally published in two halves, over a decade apart. Throughout, Cervantes constantly reminds us that the book is a book; in the second part, even the characters are aware of this, making for an intensely amusing and clever read. Also, before Cervantes published the second part, an impostor author released his own spurious sequel. Cervantes, responding in kind, changed the course of the book and wrote the apocryphal sequel into his own sequel, in addition to the first part of his own narrative! It isn't as confusing as it sounds -- indeed, it's quite delightful and inventive -- but the author himself, infamously, lost the course of his own narrative several times and lapsed into error. Of course, this, too, is noted later on in the book and commented upon as well. Literature as a whole is also commented upon. The author, in the second part, even addresses the criticisms of the first part, such as its digressions (which he defends, but stays away from in Part II) and its loose ends. The scene where the curate is selecting which books to burn and which to save is one of the most satirically-amusing ever written.
The book, for all of its burlesque and even occasional lack of seriousness, also brings several important questions to light. What is reality? What makes one noble? If one does noble and brave deeds only because one is deluded, is one then noble in reality, or merely a poor farce and a walking joke? For these, and many other reasons, Don Quixote is a classic that deserves to be read by all.
Rating: 5
Summary: What You Don't Remember About This Book
Comment: What else can someone say about "Don Quixote"?
I have Pablo Picasso's pen and ink drawing of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza hanging on the wall. The windmills are on the horizon behind them.
Chasing the windmills. Everybody knows who did that, even if they never picked up the book. But if you have never read the book, you don't remember other things about the story.
You don't remember how the old man went insane when they walled up his library? You don't remember in "Don Quixote, Part Two," the old man and Sancho Panza at the printers reading about themselves in the new book titled "Don Quixote, Part Two"?
Sancho picks up the galley sheets and reads about themselves up tp the very point where they are at the printers reading about themselves. The author of those galley sheets is Miguel Cervantes, whom they have heard of and like very much.
Who can imagine characters in a novel approving of the author who created them? We had to wait five hundred years before Luigi Pirandello wrote something similar in his play, "Sic Characters In Search of an Author."
Sancho reads part of the new book entitled "Don Quixote, Part Two" by a different author. He shows it to the old man. It is to much for the old man, who drags Sancho out the door and away from that disturbing book by another author.
This out Borges Borges!
Jorge Luis Borges, the blind South American poet, wrote a small story about the real author of Don Quixote. It is very cute and amusing. Go buy Borges' book also.
"Don Quixote" is a very modern book. The story is simple. There are no hard parts in these pages, The is no chapter like The Grand Inquisitor chapter in that other book.
The Modern Library edition of "Don Quixote" has been on my shelves for about thirty years. Get this book and read it. It is required reading.
Rating: 5
Summary: A comic masterpiece about truth and illusion
Comment: Don Quixote is a comedy, which could only have been written by the hitherto obscure genius later in life after he had suffered injury on the battlefield and was subject to periods of harsh confinement in prison. The comedy is bittersweet about this everyman who lives strictly by a code of ancient ethical ideals that inspire him to fits of lunacy, folly and madness. Lucid, indeed inspired, when the subject is anything but knight errantry, Quixote's commitment to his ideals brings him insult, injury, poverty and ridicule. This knight is duped by his convictions into waging war on windmills, galley slaves, funeral processions, pilgrims, shepherds, herds of bulls and countless chimeras invoked in the name of love for his Dona el Toboso. This most chaste of knights cannot see the realities of human nature and worse cannot accept them. His endless brutal punishments for his idealistic blindspots plague him and his squire, Pancho Panza, wherever they aspire in the personal quest to right an injury, assist a noble cause, protect the weak and innocent, and slay evil demons of every imaginable stripe. When I first read this novel, I thought Quixote a fool who was duly punished for being so out of touch with reality. By the end of the novel I saw that Don Quixote was no less than an everyman whose noblest instincts were doomed to bring suffering upon him as he was driven to confront the baser powers of existence. What Crusader fails to risk madness in the wake of the futility of human action in a vast, overpowering and hostile universe? In Quixote and Sancho I caught a glimpse of Vladimir and Estragon in "Waiting for Godot." One man's truth is another's falsehood. One man's reality is another's illusion. One man's ideal is another's folly. Yet Quixote rides out in his quests across Spain, nevertheless, without fear for the chaos he engenders nor the futility of his cause nor the danger to himself or his best friend. For his nobility Don Quixote becomes not only famous and truly beloved but also earns immortality. Read this "father of the modern novel" for its wit and genius and classical construction to understand the Quixotic ideals that stir within you and the possibilities for real victory of the human spirit.
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Title: Don Quixote (Cliffs Notes) by Marianne Sturman ISBN: 0822004151 Publisher: Cliffs Notes Pub. Date: 08 July, 1964 List Price(USD): $5.99 |
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Title: Divine Comedy : Inferno; Purgatorio; Paradiso (in one volume) by Dante ISBN: 0679433139 Publisher: Everyman's Library Pub. Date: 28 April, 1992 List Price(USD): $23.00 |
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Title: Moby-Dick by HERMAN MELVILLE ISBN: 0553213113 Publisher: Bantam Pub. Date: 01 February, 1981 List Price(USD): $4.95 |
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