Reading Matter
Reading Matter
I made on attempt on the mountain of Don Quixote and made it to page 400. I don’t intend to reach the summit, though I enjoyed the climb. It’s just a bit too repetitive and the joke starts to wear thin. Still it has a certain impressive monomania about it. The knight of the rueful countenance will not soon be forgotten, nor his squire Sancho Panza, nor his horse Rozinante, nor the radiant Dulcinea del Toboso. I turned from that to Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame and finished it without difficulty. Apart from the wonderful (and wonderfully melodramatic) story, it abounds in scathing indictments of royalty, priests, scholars, and common folk. The zeal with which poor Esmeralda is hanged for being a witch is truly shocking. Obviously the author took a dim view of humanity, and it’s hard to disagree with him there. The chapter on architecture and the printing press is intellectually penetrating. The final image of the skeleton of Quasimodo entwined with that of the executed Esmeralda is marvellously sentimental.
Your perseverance in the face of repetition and excessive wordiness is enviable… Time for re-reading Madame Bovary? An evergreen (and not verbose) novel with wider real life application range than the masterful Lolita IMHO.
In fact I re-read Madame Bovary a few months ago and found it as affecting as the first time. Not at all verbose.
Speaking of French writers, why not give Violette LeDuc’s, “The Bastard”, a try? Part fiction, part autobiography. Simone de Beauvoir wrote the Foreword (and earnestly recommended it). If you can get past the first 50 pages it’s a wild ride. Yeah, she was nuts—but in the best sort of way.
Going through a stack of notes the other day, I came across one related to Don Quixote. The audiobook with David Case as the narrator is one I jotted down to look for. I don’t know if you enjoy “reading” books with your ears, but some narrators really do an outstanding job!