Don Quixote (Part 2) - Cervantes

The first part of 'Don Quixote' ends with the poor deluded knight being taken back to his village to recover from his adventures.  The second part starts with a visiting scholar talking to Quixote and Sancho Panza about the book that was published about them.  The two put their heads together and marvel that any author could possibly know about their adventures in such detail.  Quixote concludes that this was the work of a sorcerer and Sancho has no choice but to go along with him.
The two set out again but big changes have happened.  1) Everyone knows about them and 2) both of them are fully aware that they are creating a legend.  It is as if they have become conscious characters in a book.  This creates an enormous feeling of meta-fiction.  The reader is reading about a book that knows it is a book.
Again, they have crazy adventures but now another level has been added.  Don Quixote meets another knight who claims to have beaten the famous Don Quixote in battle.  (It turns out that this other knight has an ulterior motive for baiting him into a fight.)  He meets people who tell him about Don Quixote.  In the first book he was creating his own legend.  Now it is growing on its own and he must live up to it.
This book also brings about a blossoming of Sancho Panza.  He speaks in aphorisms.  In fact, he becomes famous for speaking in aphorisms.  At one point he is appointed governor of a town.  Sancho is unaware that the whole thing is a gag being put upon him, but he gamely tries his best. 
I laughed time and time again.  I marveled that Cervantes could keep coming up with new ideas to get his two heroes into trouble and back out again.  I loved it.

Don Quixote (Book One) - Cervantes

The basic idea behind Cervantes' brilliant 'Don Quixote' is well known.  An older man has read so many of the books on romantic chivalry that he loses his mind on the subject.  He goes out and decides to become one of the knights he has read about.  After a brief outing to be knighted by an innkeeper, he returns home and hires a neighboring peasant, Sancho Panza, to be his squire.
His misadventures start immediately.  He sees a plain with windmills on it and perceives them as giants.  He charges off and Sancho can't stop him.  He is dumped from his horse by a windmill arm.  He tells Sancho that this has been the work of an evil enchanter who has changed the giants to windmills (or vice versa).  This 'enchanter' becomes the method of his madness throughout.  This is Quixote's explanation for why things look different to him than to everyone else. 
Early on, he promises great riches to Sancho Panza.  The great knight will doubtlessly win a kingdom or two during his adventures and grant governorship of an island or something to his squire.  This is the way it is in his great 'histories' and no doubt it will happen again.  Sancho becomes fixed on the idea and is willing to go to great lengths for his future governorship.
Again and again they run into trouble.  Quixote sees some group of harmless tradesmen on the road and decides that it is an evil group with a captive princess.  He charges at them and causes some damage.  As soon as one of them catches his wits, he beats Don Quixote from his horse.  (Often Sancho Panza suffers a beating as well.)  They retreat and lick their wounds while blaming everything on evil enchanters.  This basic conflict is repeated again and again.
Meanwhile, all around them, actual romantic adventures are occurring.  Lovers are cheated from each other.  Money is taken and recovered.  Villainous men are brought to justice.  At one point, a romantic story is introduced as a lost manuscript, even though it has nothing to do with the actual story that is going on.  It's all quite entertaining.
Finally, some men from La Mancha find Don Quixote and, while entertaining his madness, bind him up in a cage and transport him home.  This is also explained as the work of enchanters and Quixote goes along with it, despite Sancho's efforts to clue him in on the trick.  The great knight is returned to his home and his worried niece and housekeeper.


I enjoyed this a great deal.  The storyline is a bit repetitive, but entertaining.  Cervantes goes to great lengths to find new ways of getting Don Quixote into trouble and then getting him out of it again.  Sancho Panza is wonderful, simply wonderful.  He is a trying hard to deal with an obvious madman but failing at each point.  He tries to point out the holes in Quixote's stories but gets no where.  And then greed takes over and he starts to find reasons to believe in the enchanter nonsense.
It's easy to see why the book was popular when it was written.  I found myself smiling often while reading it and even laughed out loud a few times.  I also had to share bits of it with my wife.  This is a very fun read.

Upcoming

As the month of May draws to a close, I have now read through 18 pieces from the Great Books 10 year reading plan.  This is the regular number of works for each year in the plan.  As you might remember, I took their reading list apart and decided to use it in a more ala carte manner.  I took out nearly half of the remaining selections for years 5 - 10, paring the whole thing down to 59 remaining pieces. 
At the time, I thought it would take me about three years to get through it all, but I now think it will be two years or less.  As I mentioned, I've covered nearly a third of the works in five months.  When I first decided to tackle the list, I charted each piece by page number so that I could balance the months out.  Because of that, I can tell you that I've read 1299 pages so far this year, which would be a regular amount from a full year. 
This isn't because I'm awesome. It's because my schedule has allowed me to put in time each day towards reading goals.  I don't know if that will continue, but I've lightly planned out the rest of the year in hopes that it will.  If that schedule changes, then so be it.  I'll adjust.
The plan is to work on two separate tracks.  One of those tracks will work on finishing the group that I think of as the Enlightenment philosophers.  Those works:

• Hobbes - Leviathan (Part II)
• Milton - Samson Agonistes
• Pascal - The Provincial Letters
• Montesquieu - The Spirit of Laws (Books I-V, VIII, XI-XII)
• Rousseau - Discourse on Political Economy
• Locke - Letter Concerning Toleration
• Mill - Utilitarianism

There are also four pieces of Spinoza, basically Ethics (Parts 1-5), but I have a reason for holding those back.  If it turns out that these go faster than expected, I may cover Spinoza as well.
While working on these, I'm also going to work on some of the pieces of longer fiction.  The remaining ones:

• Cervantes - Don Quixote (2, broken in two pieces in the 10 year reading plan, though I'll read as one)
• Sterne - Tristam Shandy
• Fielding - Tom Jones
• Goethe - Faust (2)
• Tolstoy - War and Peace (2)
• Boswell - Life of Johnson (various parts, 2 pieces in the plan)

I very much doubt that I'll get through all of these this year.  I'm going to start with 'Don Quixote' and I've mentally tagged November and December for 'War and Peace'.  If I get through half of them and the seven Enlightenment pieces from above, then I'll be more than half way through the remaining works and in good shape to finish up next year. 


I'm also rounding out the work on Shakespeare.  I've currently read 28 of the 38 plays.  I aim to be done with the whole set by the end of July.  Maybe earlier.  I've done two a week for most of May.
I'm going to miss them when they're done, though I'll write about that in more depth when it happens. 
I've thought about trying to fit the 100 Best Plays project back in to fill that gap, but I'm not sure if I will or not.  There is some crossover between that project and the Great Books project so I've actively blogged more than a quarter of the full hundred.  Maybe I'll fill in more gaps later in the year.

It looks like a busy year of reading but I've greatly enjoyed what I've gotten out of the first five months of it.  I can only hope that the next seven are as good!