It's a common trope in fiction: a final confrontation between the central hero of a story and its central villain. It's an important trope in Westerns, both on the page and screen -- Clint Eastwood's "Unforgiven" is just one famous example. And we see it in works of fiction that are too many to count: … Continue reading Hero, meet your villain; or, never mind
Category: Don Quixote
Streets of Laredo
About 10 years ago I saw the television adaptation of Larry McMurtry's novel, "Streets of Laredo," his sequel to "Lonesome Dove." I had recently become a father, and that may have colored my judgment a bit, but I found "Laredo" to be, among many things, most memorably a story about parenthood. Motherhood, in this case. … Continue reading Streets of Laredo
McMurtry and Cervantes
Larry McMurtry published “Streets of Laredo”, his sequel to “Lonesome Dove”, in summer 1993. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution then ran a piece by Michael Skube, who compared “Lonesome Dove” to “Don Quixote”: Living briefly off the luster of its predecessor, a sequel establishes its own grounds as art or it diminishes the work from which … Continue reading McMurtry and Cervantes
Don Quixote and Lonesome Dove
I've recently finished Larry's McMurtry's western, "Lonesome Dove," a magnificent novel that I cannot get off my mind. I've been doing a little research about the book, and apparently McMurtry was partly inspired by "Don Quixote." In his 2008 memoir, he wrote: [E]arly on, I read some version of Don Quixote and pondered the grave … Continue reading Don Quixote and Lonesome Dove
Pale Blue Dots
I posted Sancho Panza's speech about the earth in the comments section of a YouTube video featuring Carl Sagan's meditations from "Pale Blue Dot." One Youtuber replied that there were similar thoughts in Cicero’s “Scipio’s Dream” and Marcus Aurelius’ “Meditations.” Cicero’s “Scipio’s Dream”, part 3: And as I looked on every side I saw other … Continue reading Pale Blue Dots
Niebuhr on caballeros
January 31, 2021 I'm rereading Reinhold Niebuhr’s “Moral Man and Immoral Society”, which I read back when I was at Union Seminary. This is from chapter 5, and it reminds me of the problems I had with the word "caballero": The moral excellencies which privileged classes claim and by which they justify their special advantages … Continue reading Niebuhr on caballeros
Madame Bovary
January 14, 2021 I’ve just finished “Madame Bovary.” Some of it was slow going, specifically the passages of excessive detail about physical objects and surroundings. But after finishing the novel, I read in Soledad Fox’s “Flaubert and Don Quijote” that Flaubert used all this detail to satirize the “realist” genre: that’s why he describes the … Continue reading Madame Bovary
The Female Quixote
December 31, 2020 I’ve read Charlotte Lennox's “The Female Quixote” (Kwicksoht), and I struggled through much of the first half, but the effort was well worth it. I flew through the last 100 pages. Lennox’s novel was inspired by Cervantes and later inspired Austen, two authors I’ve recently discovered, so I really wanted to read … Continue reading The Female Quixote
Arabella
November 17, 2020 It’s often said that “Northanger Abbey” is similar to “Don Quixote.” I would think that Austen read Cervantes, but I’m just finding out about a 1752 novel called “The Female Quixote; or, the Adventures of Arabella,” by Charlotte Lennox, that Austen read and even praised in an 1807 letter. https://wormhole.carnelianvalley.com/the-influence-of-the-female-quixote-on-northanger-abbey/ This is … Continue reading Arabella
Cervantes y su caballero
October 21, 2020 All throughout my reading of "Don Quixote," I was struggling with the question of what Cervantes meant when he wrote "caballero," which in English means "knight." It's not a simple problem, because “caballero” means knight but it also means gentleman. It has a double meaning, and is potentially a source of confusion. … Continue reading Cervantes y su caballero
