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A review by trin
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
3.0
Okay, first, can we pretend that this didn’t take me quite so ridiculously long to finish? Thanks. In exchange, I’ll admit that there’s probably not anything new or interesting I can say that would add to what’s already been said about Don Quixote. This review is going to be a couple of shallow thoughts strung together. Sorry. I’m too intimidated to even attempt anything more.
I would be lying if I didn’t admit I found this a bit of a slog. It’s more than 900 pages long, and parts of it—especially the first book—are very repetitive; lots of Don Quixote and/or Sancho Panza getting beaten up, poor guys. This translation also comes with about ten gazillion footnotes, most of which clarify something that didn’t need to be clarified—like giving the birth and death dates of an author referenced—and add nothing at all to the narrative. If I were to read this again (um. Give me twenty years at least), the first thing I would do differently is I would skip the footnotes entirely.
But I would also be lying if I didn’t say that parts of it were hilarious and awesome and great. Sancho’s long strings of aphorisms and sayings frequently cracked me up, as did much of the meta-humor—Cervantes making fun of the unauthorized sequel to the first book that came out before the second was published, and so on. And there were several sequences, most notably the one with Sancho as governor, that delighted me.
I was a bit disappointed by the ending, mostly because I had heard it talked up by so many people. Frankly, I like mad Don Quixote much more than the sane version, so the effect for me was kind of like the last few minutes of the Disney Beauty and the Beast: “All that, and she’s stuck with some poncy blond guy?” Yeah, Disney’s [b:Beauty and the Beast|41424|Beauty A Retelling of the Story of Beauty and the Beast|Robin McKinley|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1169613617s/41424.jpg|2321285]—that’s obviously exactly what Don Quixote is like! Suck of that piece of analysis, Harold Bloom!
I would be lying if I didn’t admit I found this a bit of a slog. It’s more than 900 pages long, and parts of it—especially the first book—are very repetitive; lots of Don Quixote and/or Sancho Panza getting beaten up, poor guys. This translation also comes with about ten gazillion footnotes, most of which clarify something that didn’t need to be clarified—like giving the birth and death dates of an author referenced—and add nothing at all to the narrative. If I were to read this again (um. Give me twenty years at least), the first thing I would do differently is I would skip the footnotes entirely.
But I would also be lying if I didn’t say that parts of it were hilarious and awesome and great. Sancho’s long strings of aphorisms and sayings frequently cracked me up, as did much of the meta-humor—Cervantes making fun of the unauthorized sequel to the first book that came out before the second was published, and so on. And there were several sequences, most notably the one with Sancho as governor, that delighted me.
I was a bit disappointed by the ending, mostly because I had heard it talked up by so many people. Frankly, I like mad Don Quixote much more than the sane version, so the effect for me was kind of like the last few minutes of the Disney Beauty and the Beast: “All that, and she’s stuck with some poncy blond guy?” Yeah, Disney’s [b:Beauty and the Beast|41424|Beauty A Retelling of the Story of Beauty and the Beast|Robin McKinley|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1169613617s/41424.jpg|2321285]—that’s obviously exactly what Don Quixote is like! Suck of that piece of analysis, Harold Bloom!