>For what beauty can there be, or what proportion to the parts to the whole, and of the whole to the parts, in a book or fable, in which a youth of sixteen years hews down with his sword a giant as big as a steeple, and splits him in two, as if he were made of paste?
Cervantes predicted Berserk
Colton Thompson
gonna catch up today, maybe get a day's advance and finish the first volume.
Tyler Williams
good idea to have the day off between part one and part two OP, hopefully anons can catch up.
Levi King
read chapter 43 aloud with a friend and busted a gut at Don standing on his horse with his hand tied. Part of it was also Don's presentation and instruction of
>Lady, take this hand, or rather this scourge of the evil-doers of the earth. Take this hand, I say, which no other woman's has touched, not even hers who has complete possession of my whole body. I do not give it to you to kiss, but that you may gaze upon the structure of its sinews, the interlacement of its muscles, the width and capacity of its veins, from all of which you may judge what strength must be in the arm that such a hand belongs.
a mutual friend of ours was lamenting about his small bitch hands so we sent him that passage. go for it user. the second part is more evenly distributed averaging at about 23-4 pages a day, so hopefully we can stay on track. Might be more to talk about to as the philosophical elements become more explicit.
Colton Powell
Going to stick to the original schedule, dont agree with you trying to change it for everyone without a poll. Why should my schedule change because some plebs can't read a lousy 40 pages max a day?
may 2nd had a 40 page load. if that's where you're at i pity you, but you might be forgiven for skipping the entire Captive's Tale. Don Quixote's speech about arms vs words in chapter 37 & 38 is amusing though. the 3rd 4th and 5th are lighter loads at 19, 23 and 21 pages respectively so you have a chance to catch up, but vote in the strawpoll if you could use an extra day
Levi Hernandez
I fell behind and had to resort to the audiobook so I can listen at work.
Skipping the captives tale is blasphemy, it is the best one so far, meetup with the judge had me crying
Besides what is the point of a read along if you are going to skip parts? Why even read at all?
Gabriel Allen
I agree, I didn't know such a short story could make me so happy
Leo King
The captives tale was one of the best parts of the book so far, and an interesting look into the two different cultures during the 17th century
Lucas Nguyen
iirc book 2 will have more tales and even tales within tales around the same subject, so skipping the captive's tale is not a good idea, if you do that, you'll end up skipping half the book.
Sebastian Morris
Sorry for my tardiness, I was busy with The Wasp Factory but finally finished it and it was rather good!
Your excitement about the Captives Tale is making ME excited to finally read it, I won't skip it, user. Pommes.
And without further poo poo, time to spend some more time with our two clumsy rascals.
Skipping a part would not equal reading the book user
Justin Perez
Finished the first part and I have to say it has been a kino reading.
David Harris
The chapters where no less than half of the text is dedicated to Cervantes talking at us about books, plays, or whatever else, are kind of annoying. Both this latest chapter (48) and the book burning one near the beginning of the novel have felt tedious and borderline masturbatory.
Don't get me wrong, I've been loving Don Quixote for the most part so far, I just dislike that Cervantes occasionally takes such lengthy digressions from the story for no apparent reason.
Charles James
Pic related gave me the first good laugh in a while, also the fight that ensued too.
For a moment I thought the Canon would get through to DQ and make him realise his madness, but of course he just got worse.
Also I was confused a bit in the goatherds story as he named his rival as Anselmo, I assumed it was Anselmo from the Lothario story and it confused me as their history was different and I realised Cervantes had just reused the Anselmo name again, which is strange as it seems like a unique name and I find it strange he chose that name instead of another.
Agreed, he loves to brag about how much he has read and knows about and it drags on.
The epitaphs and sonnets at the end were beautiful.
Seeing as today we should be finishing up part one and starting part two soon, I thought I would ask, any final thoughts on part one, anons? And what are your hopes for part two?
Christopher Reyes
I knew it was this part before even opening the picture. It's so good.
Jonathan Powell
I dont know why but in my mind I keep picturing DQ and Sancho as pic related.
Yea Forumsfag here; Disney tried for many years to make an animated version of Don Quixote (pic related) but it was never able to get past the finish line for one reason or another.
Anyone else got the 4th centenary edition? My copy came with a cut ribbon marker, I'm thinking of replacing it with a satin one, but I need to know what does the original measure. Can someone measure it for me in centimeters, please?
Jaxson Anderson
In contrast to the other anons, my favorite parts were the book burning and discussions about novels. Don Quixote didn't read novels to judge their qualities, and he didn't read them for entertainment. A part of him took those books seriously and on their own terms, everything he does afterwards is him being honest about that. Socrates says in Crito "I cannot, now that this fate has come upon me, discard the arguments I used; they seem to me much the same. I value and respect the same principles as before...". I believe a similar sentiment is communicated when Don Quixote goes into a voluntary penance while Sancho delivers his letter to Dulcinea, and when he agrees to go into the cage at the end of Book 1.
Don Quixote is a book with many qualities, and it is entertaining, but it also leaves us with some of Don Quixote's madness to call upon in our own reading. We can be apprehensive about reading like some of the more clever characters, or we can read in the hope of some hypothetical reward, or we can read for any particular reason that we find the character Don Quixote endearing.
Maybe 'relatable' is more correct than 'endearing', or maybe I could phrase it in a way that can frame Don Quixote's frequent acts of violence to the way we go about reading. Maybe it doesn't just apply to reading, but the way we approach activities that are disdained but popular, like sports or anime. I've only read part one so far, so I could be totally off the mark. I've heard that part two is about an attempt to cure him. My hope it will identify a common thread between characters like Don Quixote and Raskolnikov, Holden Caulfield or Travis Bickle.
Jack Phillips
I was reading at the park and an old man walking around the park with his wife asked me “what are you reading?” And i said don quixote, his wife says he loves that book and he tells me it’s one of his favorites. He walked a couple steps ahead and turned back and said “actually it’s my favorite ever”.
Daniel Brooks
>the donkey and the horse are friends Cute.
Ethan Stewart
ah, really? those were some of my favorites; though i suppose in some way Cervantes is kind of brow beating the underlying theme of the novel in these segments. We gather here at Yea Forums to participate in similar kinds of literary conversations, i enjoy comparing our conversations. Again, I find it interesting how Cervantes uses the religious figures to discuss the validity of certain literature; they don't even mention the Bible because, like Don Quixote, they consider it history.
>maybe I could phrase it in a way that can frame Don Quixote's frequent acts of violence to the way we go about reading. elaborate! I was about to say to the anti lit convo anons that Don Quixote is essentially acting out a radical interpretation of chivalric texts. It reminds me vaguely of vaporwave; reinterpreting junk culture far from what it's creators may have intended.
John Brown
I guess my issue with those parts is that they feel too much like Cervantes briefly reviewing various books and bragging about how many he had read/how big his library was, or commenting on the stage plays of his day, and not enough like characters having natural conversations with one another.
Josiah Smith
>Disney tried for many years to make an animated version of Don Quixote fuck, a hand drawn disney adaptation of this could be really cool, although they probably wouldn't get it right because you just can't fit a 1000 page novel into a 90 minute animation
Nolan Lewis
isn't that also kind of a meta joke? i mean in the preface he states that many authors rely on referencing other works but he will not. and then he does the exact opposite
Jaxson Ward
>elaborate! I was about to say to the anti lit convo anons that Don Quixote is essentially acting out a radical interpretation of chivalric texts. It reminds me vaguely of vaporwave; reinterpreting junk culture far from what it's creators may have intended.
I would say, if you have no opinion on Don Quixote, he'll attack you so that you'll at least have a negative opinion of him. Does that mean we should attack people who have the ability to read but decide against it? He definitely involves everyone in his delusions, which is a weirdly equitable and violent idea. And that goes for the authors of the books he has read and the people he encounters in his adventures. Vaporware is a great example, there's almost a direct connection considering Don Quixote's "Golden Age" speeches. I'm all jumbled up here but I think I'll have to read part 2 before I can express it in a clear way.
Matthew Bennett
That may be the case, though I thought that part was referring more to citing philosophers and the like than "regular" authors.
Perhaps I'm looking at it the wrong way, it could just be Cervantes satirizing the character of the priest and his overly moralistic nature. First, by choosing which books to burn and which to keep based on his own subjective (and seemingly quite variable) sense of morality, then again by saying he dislikes that some plays defy convention and prefers "moral tales" that both "delight and teach" without being quite so grandiose.
Anthony Thompson
Based, I want to be friends with him
Kevin Morgan
Now the dust of has settled on the first part, is the character of Don Quixote based or cringe? I thought he was just a degenerate lunatic but after launching that loaf of bread at the goatsherd and calling him a son of a whore, I've come to the conclusion that's he very well may be based
Luis Lewis
Yeah, this problem has hung over every attempted adaptation, which is part of the reason so many of them have died in production. (Even Orson Welles was unable to finish his film.) The most successful adaptation, Man of La Mancha, essentially took the characters and most famous vignettes and put them in a completely different story. (It's pretty good if you like musicals; I'd recommend it and Jacques Brel's chanson-style French cover album.)
ha, that's a ridiculous moment to finally come around to Don Quixote. In the second part, he has less to prove and more to reflect on so critics tend to like him more there, apparently. Actually, some people consider that the second part could be re-titled "Sancho's quest". The meta elements double down near instantly, so i get why it's the preferred book - i just really enjoyed the saucy Lothario tale and the subsequent lovers reunion and Don Quixote attributing it all to "the chimeras of knight errantry"; which in that very peculiar case was practically valid. They all came together, as ridiculous and unlikely as it was, because of Don Quixote's quest to resurrect Knight errantry, or rather, because of Cervantes' quest to lampoon it.
i think you were somehow talking to me and my wife in the future after we time traveled back to now
Logan Russell
first time I read it I couldn't finish it. Don't think I ever will even though I'll definitely read DQ again some time in the future. I'm actually planning on having that last chapter read to me in my deathbed, and then I'll see who dies first, DQ or me.
Jayden Gomez
you mean the RAE edition, user? Mine is 28 cm.
Daniel Lee
What’s the best version I can download for free?
Brandon Carter
Yes, that one. Thanks.
Levi Brown
he's also trashing knight novels, but he's writing one. there lies the merit, Cervantes is teaching them (and us) how to do it with artistic merit. the equivalent nowadays is Ballester or the south american magic realists. they write fantasy novels, but literary ones. They don't trash Tolkien, GRRM or the others directly, but the trashing is implied.
Sebastian Bell
I tried, but Don Quixote is just not for me.
I'm completely happy with "fighting the windmills". There are much better books than this boring book. It's not really bad, but I'm only interested in specific books because I already read science books all day and I don't give a fuck about social criticism, because every fucking political science, history, or psychology book I read already flooded me with all the social criticism.
See you when the next Read Along is, maybe with a book I actually want to read.
Jaxson Lewis
That's okay user, I hope you enjoy your next book
Zachary Wright
Bro, Im reading the chapters where Anselmo is trying to get Loratiro to seduce his wife to test her virtue. Im getting kind of chubbed up over here thinking about how hot it would be to slowly escalate the sexual tension with my friends chaste and beautiful wife. Eventually getting to the point where she is sucking my cock while Anselmo is out buying some sheep. Getting to the point where the charade has gone on for so many months Camila get pregnat with my child and I have completeled cucked the idiot Anselmo just to provew the point that his plan was stupid.
Nolan Clark
filtered, you are an arrogant fool.
Gavin Phillips
Cheers user, now I'm bricked up
Ethan Young
keep reading
Jordan Turner
Not really final thoughts, but I'm going to share my favorite passages so far. Usually when I read a book I note down the page number and passage I especially like. (Note I'm using Vintage's Gross(wo)man edition so page number and translation might vary)
Page 286 >If a man seeks the impossible, the possible may be justly denied him Page 412 >If one were to reply that those who compose these books write them as fictions, and therefore are not obliged to consider the fine points of truth, I should respond that the more truthful the fiction, the better it is, and the more probable and possible, the more pleasing. Page 415 >If all, or almost all, the plays that are popular now, imaginative works as well as historical ones, are known to be nonsense and without rhyme or reason, and despite this the mob hears them with pleasure and thinks of them and approves of them as good, when they are very far from being so, and the authors who compose them and the actors who perform them say they must be like this because that is just how the mob wants them, and no other way; the plays that have a design and follow the story as art demands appeal to a handful of discerning persons who understand them, while everyone else is incapable of comprehending their artistry; and since, as far as the authors and actors are concerned, it is better to earn a living with the crowd than a reputation with the elite, this is what would happen to my book after I had singed my eyebrows trying to keep the precepts I have mentioned and had become the tailor who wasn’t paid.
Sometimes though I get too engrossed in the book and forget about writing them down, so I end up with less notes than I would have liked. In this case I only started halfway through.
Adrian King
I have to take a break and rub one out first. The part where Loratio is readining Camila sonnets right in front of Anselmo is getting me too hard to focus. The audacity of it is too much.
Jonathan Morgan
Where did Nabokov user go? :(
Lucas Peterson
I was you about twenty years ago. I bought Don Quixote around the time Grossman's translation was published, gave it a try, and was so bored by the characters discussing which novels of knight errantry to keep and which to discard that I figured the entire book was as boring and gave up on it entirely. Then one day not very long ago I was browsing Yea Forums and saw they were doing a read-along, and the rest is history.
Please try again - not necessarily soon, but try again, it really is worth it.
Levi Edwards
Very based, I should do the same. I feel like writing down my favourite passages might help retain them more in my mind as well.
