A teensy tiny entry this week, since I’m mostly offline. Here’s to Week 15 and your arrival therein!
Next Wednesday: Let’s meet up at the end of Chapter LI (aka page 797, Grossman), just before “the claw marks had healed.”
"…something like the supervisor of an entire team of political agents…"
A teensy tiny entry this week, since I’m mostly offline. Here’s to Week 15 and your arrival therein!
Next Wednesday: Let’s meet up at the end of Chapter LI (aka page 797, Grossman), just before “the claw marks had healed.”
As I read these sections with everyone indulging DQ’s fantasies, I keep being reminded of “The Restaurant at the End of the Universe.” Zaphod becomes the only man ever to experience the Total Perspective Vortex without going insane. The Vortex shows you your insignificance in the universe, but Zaphod goes into it in an artificial universe constructed only for him, so it shows him that he is the center of the universe.
Worth noting: Sancho is about to take control of his insula – from which we get the word “insular” (and insulate, etc.). This is rife with the suggestion of living in his own particular world rather than the world at large.
Dr. Vitz, I would have bet the farm that if someone was going to bring up the Total Perspective Vortex during the course of this Deathmarch, it would be either The Old Man or myself. I tip my hat to you, sir.
Call me crazy, but I’ve always harbored the belief that even if he’d been put in the Vortex in the regular old universe, Zaphod’s colossal ego would have protected him. I would think that the Vortex requires some internal sense of perspective to work on, and Zaphod has none. Don Quixote, likewise, has such a total lack of perspective that nothing can really hurt him. His body can be bruised but his ego remains intact.
The continuing tricks played by the duke and duchess on DQ and SP make for good reading, but why go to such trouble? DQ puts it well after SP questions getting on the flying horse, “The person who sends for us from lands so distant will not deceive us, for there would be little glory in deceiving those who trust him, and even if everything turns out contrary to what I imagine, the glory of having undertaken this deed cannot be obscured by any sort of malevolence.” I think DQ and SP have been handling themselves pretty well, even as they fall victims of pranks, bruises, and jolts. And I like the advice DQ gives to prepare Sancho to be a good and merciful governor. Especially the part about not pissing off the teachers union.
Chapter 44, p. 745, DQ complains “Why must I be so unfortunate a knight that no maiden can look upon me without falling in love” in response to attention from 14-15 year old girls. Apparently it was not considered improper for an old guy like DQ to be involved with what today is called “jail bait?” I guess he’s like a rock star or movie star of his day, with a flock of underage groupies swarming around him.
I recall an interview with Robert Palmer about his cover of the song “I Didn’t Mean to Turn You On.” He said that they decided to do the song because the idea of a forty something year old man singing those lyrics (which I gathered from the interview were written either by or for a young woman to sing to a young man) was so ludicrous and funny it was hard to resist. And then the song came out. And it was a huge hit. And the video came out. And that was a huge hit. And the whole phenomenon was even more ludicrous and funny. And I think that once again Cervantes has picked up on the richness of a timeless joke as well as the truth behind it – that an older, washed up man mad with delusions of grandeur can be the object of young maidens’ affections. And that he feels tortured by it all! And just wants to be with his Sancho.
“an older, washed up man mad with delusions of grandeur can be the object of young maidens’ affection”
Welcome to my life!
Now Jeff, no offense, but at this point, I’d hardly call you a “young maiden.”
-Cecil
Obviously you haven’t seen me in heels.
Love him or love him not so much by page 800, the Don will be with me for a long time to come. Has anyone else noticed how often his name’s come up in the 15 weeks we’ve been reading him? I mean in places other than Cecil’s vortex? Here’s an example, from this book I was reading that’s about re-reading (really!), Wendy Lesser’s “Nothing Remains the Same.� She’s comparing the Don to Prospero in Shakespeare’s The Tempest:
“Prospero is, after all, the hero of the play, possibly its only real character. But he is also a terrible windbag and an unquestioning believer in his own rightness. Don Quixote too had these flaws, so why do I love the crazy Spanish night and faintly dislike, at times, the Shakespearean magician? Perhaps because the Don IS crazy: his foolishness, like that of Dostoyevsky’s idiot, makes him infinitely more bearable. If Prospero is crazy, it’s in a completely insulated way.�
Doesn’t that make you feel just a little smarter? To have some kind of clue about what she’s going on about?
Stellasauce’s comments really captured what I’ve been feeling in this week’s chunk of reading–that sense of timeless truths, jokes, experiences, just plain old timelessness. I turn each page expecting a universal truth–and voila–there it is. Page 729: As the Duke and Duchess prepare Sancho for his insula, Sancho says: “They can dress me,” said Sancho, “however they want; no matter what clothes I wear, I’ll always be Sancho Panza.” With this, Sancho truly became my beloved Popeye the Sailor Man because he will always “yam what he yam” no matter what kind of Bluto in Duenna’s clothing tries to set him off course. Even more interesting has been Sancho’s acute interest in clothing of all kinds in this part–the descriptions of the duennas and countesses’ clothing are quite detailed, and yet Sancho doesn’t completely get what having that insula will mean to his way of life–and his outfits. Even after 750 pages, the boy hasn’t a clue.
Love him or love him not–well, right now I’m not loving any of them much. In the middle of the Duke and Duchess part and everybody seems either mean or tedious. Maybe it’s a result of reading too big a chunk on a long plane ride. I think the story-a-night read to a child sounds like a way to go (until we hit a long philosophical discourse). On the other hand, I am happy to be so close to having read every word of such a classic and influential text, and I do recognize how timeless the truths are–I especially enjoy the ones uttered by Sancho in particular about those in power. But I’m ready for some new delights–there’s still a whole (slim) volume left for me to read (or get through, as I’m thinking about it at the moment.)
I’m up to p. 727, right after the Duke & Duchess’ prank with the horse, and I am wondering now why Cervantes is spending so much time with them (and wondering when it will end.) Not a complaint so much as curiousity–why drag out this series of jokes for so long. Like Cookie said above–it’s just feeling tedious and mean now.
However, I did raise my eyebrows, in a significant “oh HO!” kind of way, at Don Quixote’s words to Sancho on p. 727: “Sancho, just as you want people to believe what you have seen in the sky, I want you to believe what I saw in the Cave of Montesinos. And that is all I have to say.”
So: he is lucid enough to know that Sancho is making stuff up, AND to compare Sancho’s fanciful fictions with his own. At many times in Part II, Cervantes really makes it seem like DQ is much more self-aware than at other times. But, oddly enough, it doesn’t make him seem any less “heroic,” either.