"Don Quixote" by Miguel de Cervantes, a Review

You could subtitle this: how I spent almost three weeks in a staring contest with a really big, big red book.

I. Did not. Enjoy this. Sometimes there are books that have painful bits interspersed with the funny/enjoyable bits, and at the end you can look back and say: despite the painful parts, on the whole this was a great reading experience. THIS IS NOT ONE OF THOSE TIMES. Ok, yes, there are some funny parts. Lots of poop jokes. Lots of vomiting. But mostly it's an old guy roaming around being annoying, breaking into "thous" every now and again, making long rambling speeches for PAGES AND PAGES.

Preconceived notions: I went into this with a lot of already-solidified expectations based on...well, the musical. And Wishbone, the tv show with the little dog that explains the classics to kids. When everything that happened in the Wishbone episode had happened in the first few chapters, I should have known I was in trouble. Anyway, I thought this would be about a silly but valiant man who went about doing valiant and honorable things despite the corruption and cynicism of surrounding society, whilst supported by his cheerful and easy going squire. I expected to feel sorry for Senor Quixote, and to laugh when his knighting efforts turned out well, despite his silliness.

All of this is very, very wrong. He is a silly old man who goes crazy from reading too much and leaves his home to travel and perform feats of knightly-knightingness. However. Don Quixote is, to be blunt, an asshole. Each chapter consists of several episodes of him terrorizing innocent people and getting the snot beat out of him and you NEVER EVER feel sorry for him (or at least I don't). By page 400, you want someone to arrest him or kill him so you can stop reading about what a jerk he is. This jerkification includes beating up monks, destroying personal property, interrupting funerals, and generally being a pain. 940 pages of some old guy being annoying. I never got the honorable, sympathetic, romantic-in-the-face-of-cynicism vibe. Mostly, he's just a crotchety old guy who beats up everyone. Seriously. Everyone.

Formula for episodes of the book: Don Quixote is crazy, so he thinks x situation is really y situation. This results in him trying to battle an innocent person, or destroy an innocent person's stuff, or generally do harm. Innocent person protests. Don Quixote flips out at innocent person's insolence and beats him up. Don Quixote rides away, whining about Dulcinea and evil enchanters.

Also, Sancho Panza is not funny.

OK POSITIVES: If you're one for satire, this is your jam. I usually am, but Cervantes is satirizing a genre of novels that I've never read and therefore don't really care about, so I guess I just wasn't invested in the satire. Cervantes also weaves in a bunch of meta-fiction, which must have been TOTALLY TRIPPY to his contemporary readers. The book solidified modern Spanish as the language it is today, which, you know. That's helpful.

I think it would have been helpful to know that part two of the book was published ten years after part one. Maybe I should have read part one, waited ten years, then read part two. All in all, this was a very important novel- perhaps one of the MOST important novels. But that doesn't mean I have to like it. There's a reason Monty Python is only two hours long.

Three stars out of your mom- and only because it's so frickin' revolutionary.

Linky Bits. Not to be Confused With Naughty Bits.

I'm considering starting a new thing-y do wherein I direct you to literary things scattered about the interwebs. This may be weekly, or this may be a thing I do...today. At any rate, here are a few articles/tidbits/whatsadoozles I thought you may enjoy:

1. The Daily Show's take on the Huck Finn hulabaloo. Ah, Jon, ever the voice of reason. My favorite bit is when Larry Wilmore compares the censorship to Jim getting a promotion. "...from nigger to slave. That's like a show going from the WB to UPN."

2. Ok, I STILL haven't seen Helen Mirren in this most recent version of The Tempest, wherein she stars as Prospero (-a) but, you know, a lady. Also, Russell Brand? I don't care, it looks bad ass.

3. In all the casting announcements about Peter Jackson's upcoming version of The Hobbit, there lives a bit of confusion. Bringing back Frodo? But Frodo wasn't in The Hobbit. Neither was Legolas, so why are we going to have to stare at Orlando Bloom's cheekbones once again? Well, E-News (of all places) has the answers.

4. An "urban anthropologist" (wtf?) takes on the ever-evasive definition of the hispter. My favorite part is how there is more than one use of the word douchebag here.

5. Wilkie Collins didn't write the first mystery? LIES AND BLASPHEMY. But what else do you expect from the New York Times?

6. Lots of hubub about this new book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, wherein the author compares Chinese and Western parenting methods. She sounds, oddly, like my mother. I love how she compares how a Chinese mother would handle obesity in her kid (you're fat, fatty) with how a Western mother would (blah blah self esteem blah blah less chicken nuggets blah). VERY INTERESTING.

Please feel free to leave any other literary links of interest in the comments!

I HAVE OPINIONS! LOUD NOISES!

What's the deal-io? :

Hokay. So. NewSouth Books is publishing an edition of Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn that removes every occurrence of the "n-word" and replaces it with the word "slave." The word appears in the novel over 200 times. Upon hearing the news, I tweeted something to the effect that Mark Twain's spirit will find the spirit of the publisher upon his death and flog him thoroughly with a bottle of liquor. In response, Blair Publishing sent me a copy of the new edition's introduction, in which the publisher defends his decision to remove aforementioned naughty bits. Here's the link to the into, if you care to peruse: http://www.blairpub.com/extras/Intro_MarkTwain.pdf

Basically, the publisher says "abusive racial insults that bear distinct implications of permanent inferiority nonetheless repulse modern-day reader," and justifies the censorship by talking about how as a college professor, reading the n-word out loud made him and his students feel squirmy.

And the consensus is? :

BULLSHIT. Mark Twain was a realist, and accurately portrayed the attitudes and language usages of the people with whom he came into contact everyday. The offensive language is there on purpose. One of the book's main points is that Huck Finn discovers morality despite the fact that he is surrounded by this corrosive racism. IT'S THE WHOLE EFFING POINT, as a matter of fact. Part of being human is having the ability to make moral choices that include treating people as people, despite what everyone else around you is doing. Removing the ethical ickiness of the society Huck lives in just makes it a goofy story about a boy floating on a raft with some guy. 

Besides that, where the hell do we get off censoring something because the subject matter makes us feel uncomfortable? Are we going to no longer read Dickens because of all the abuses of the poor, not to mention his blatant sexism? When Jane Eyre starts talking about God, are we taking that out and inserting "unnamed deity of your choice please don't be offended oh please oh please?" Of course, all war literature is now off-limits because ewwww there are like bloody bits and deaths and grossness and stuff. Ewwwww.

Right, it's an awful word. I hate that word and I think anyone who uses it nowadays should probably be horsewhipped with a...horsewhip. But revisionist censorship- especially of a historically accurate novel like Huck Finn- is beyond dangerous, and is just plain not necessary. Are we to forget that there was a time when people used that word seriously? Forgetting atrocities is a free pass to letting them happen again. 

So, in response to the publisher's nicely worded, marshmallow fluff justification of his asinine edition I say again: BULLSHIT.