Don Quixote

Considered the first modern novel, and one of the greatest works of world literature, Don Quixote has been translated into English many times. This version by Samuel Putnam appeared in 1949.

The book, whose full title is The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote De La Mancha consists of two parts that were published separately in 1605 and 1615. Together they take up more than 1000 pages in the Putnam translation.

One of the book's most remarkable aspects is the freshness of the language. It does not sound like a work that is 400 years old.

The Story

Don Quixote, approaching 50 years of age and guilty of reading too many books of chivalry, takes it into his head to go on the road as a knight-errant. He cobbles together a suit of armor, including a helmet with a pasteboard visor, and sets out on a bony nag named Rocinante.

His self-appointed task is to right wrongs, defend honour, and proclaim the beauty of a farm girl he's never met. Upon her he bestows a grand-sounding name, Dulcinea del Toboso.

Accompanying him is a fat peasant named Sancho Panza, who is simple and loyal, happiest when his stomach is full. He rides out on an ass, spouting proverbs and malapropisms, sustained by the hope of receiving an earldom or the governorship of an island.

As a result of his delusions, Don Quixote is repeatedly thrashed, pummelled, and humiliated. He mistakes windmills for giants, an inn for a castle, and a brass pot for a helmet. Yet despite such mishaps his faith in himself never wavers, and he has a convenient explanation for his misfortunes. They are the work of an evil enchanter.

Part I contains a number of famous scenes (the windmills, the slaying of wineskins, the attack on a flock of sheep) and is said to be the more popular of the two books. Putnam’s preference, however, is for Part II, which he considers a more accomplished work.

Part I is weighed down by several tales of romantic intrigue. There is "The Captive's Tale" and "The Story of the One Who Was Too Curious for His Own Good," as well as some improbable love affairs that displace Don Quixote and Sancho Panza for large portions of Part I.

In Part II there are still a number of romantic interludes, but none are as intrusive or cloying as those in Part I.

As evidence of the novel's modernity, I present the following excerpt in which Don Quixote tells Sancho Panza of a balm that can restore health despite the severest injury. The scene is eerily similar to the famous encounter with the Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Don Quixote says:

…whenever in any battle you see my body cut in two—as very often happens—all that is necessary is for you to take the part that lies on the ground, before the blood has congealed, and fit it very neatly and with great nicety upon the other part that remains in the saddle, taking care to adjust it evenly and exactly. Then you will give me but a couple swallows of the balm of which I have told you, and you will see me sounder than an apple in no time at all.

Narrative Structure

In Part I the narrator tells us the book has been written in Arabic by a Moor named Cid Hamete Benengeli. The narrator has only a fragment in his possession, but in Chapter IX discovers the complete work in a Toledo marketplace, and hires a Moor to translate it.

In Part II the narrator frequently interrupts the tale with comments about the fictional author and translator. It is a delightful irony that most readers will be reading a real and not a phony translation.

A metafictional layer is added when the characters begin talking about Part I, whose success has made Don Quixote and Sancho Panza famous. Other characters are aware of their exploits, and several shortcomings in Book I are discussed.

A further complication is the existence of a spurious Part II, which was published one year before Cervantes’ Part II. In the latter, Don Quixote learns that the rival version has him visiting Sargossa to take part in a tournament, and this causes him to deliberately bypass it.

If Don Quixote is the first modern novel, it is also the first post-modern novel.

Miguel de Cervantes

Not much is known about his early life, other than that his childhood was itinerant and impoverished. As an adult he spent time in Italy before entering military service. He took part in the Battle of Lepanto, where he was shot in the chest and lost the use of his left hand.

When he recovered, he resumed active duty only to be captured by pirates and held as a slave for a number of years in Algiers. He was finally ransomed by his family after several abortive escape attempts. These events are reflected in the Captive’s Tale.

Even after his return to Spain, Cervantes’ life continued to be somewhat precarious. He wrote plays, became a purchasing agent for the Spanish Armada, and was imprisoned more than once.

He died in the year following the publication of Book II of Don Quixote – 23 April 1616 – the same date as Shakespeare’s death.

So popular was Don Quixote that it had a significant impact on the Spanish language.

The Even More Complete Chess Addict

This 1993 book is a revised and expanded version of The Complete Chess Addict, which appeared in 1987. It's a collection of chess anecdotes written in a breezy style, and includes eight pages of black-and-white photos, a bibliography, and an index.

The largest section in the book is taken up with a survey of famous chess players, grouped under these headings: The Royals, The Holy, The Sinners, The Musicians, The Artists, The Writers, The Entertainers, The Sportsmen, The Thinkers, The Politicians, The Soldiers, The Aristocrats, The Businessmen, The Rest.

Subsequent sections are:

The Greatest: the 64 strongest players, the 64 greatest games, etc.

The Frightful: worst games and performances at tournaments, including a game in which a player lost three pieces in 1-1/2 moves.

The Unorthodox: fantasy chess variations. Reverso is one example, in which the opening positions of knights and bishops are reversed. "All opening theory goes out the window. Try it against your club theoretician and watch him flounder!"

The Unacceptable: bad behaviour at the board, including games that turned violent.

The Awesome mentions a number of records, including:
- longest announced mate - 45 moves
- longest series of mutual captures - 13
- longest sequence of successive checks - 43
- longest sequence of moves without a capture - 100

The Bizarre: chess-playing animals, strange openings, and other oddities (eg Bobby Fischer and Barbra Streisand were classmates in Brooklyn).

Desert Island Chess: puzzles and problems.

The final two sections are the most dated, but still fun to read: The Future describes up-and-coming possible greats, and The End? talks about the influence of computer chess programs.

In all, 369 pages of trivia that range from the magnificent to the loony. A very entertaining read.

Terminal Beach

As he walked slowly through the deserted streets, he seemed to see the image of a different village superimposed over this one, where any shadowy doorway might contain a man-eater.

But these roofs were not thatched, and it was not a Mannlicher that he held in his hands.

The blistered concrete walls matched the colour of the sand that was sweeping in from the desert, and the rigidly assembled structures with their stencilled alphanumerics suggested this had once been a military installation.

Invisible Cities

Another unusual and bewitching work from the ever-imaginative Italo Calvino -- though novel may not be the correct term for this collection of sketches.

The narrator, Marco Polo, is describing to Kublai Khan the cities he has visited in his travels. There are 55 in all, described in spare but evocative prose.

My favourite is the city of Armilla, which consists only of plumbing. No houses, only a forest of water pipes rising in the air. Occasionally one glimpses a woman bathing in a tub or showering in midair.

But most sketches are far less visual than this, focusing instead on mysterious behaviour and odd routines. Sophronia, for example, is composed of two half-cities, one permanent, one temporary. The former is an amusement park of roller coasters and ferris wheels. The latter is made of stone and marble; every year it is dismantled and transported to vacant lots in the amusement park.

There is no plot to unify these tales, and the reader, like Kublai Khan, struggles to extract meaning from them. Wide and exotic his kingdom may be, yet how can such cities be real? Are they different views of the same city, Marco Polo's Venice perhaps? Can they be likened to squares on a chessboard, or an atlas of cities not yet discovered?

Further complications are the names of the cities (all feminine) and the order in which they appear. The 55 cities are composed of eleven groups:

Cities and memory
Cities and desire
Cities and signs
Thin cities
Trading cities
Cities and eyes
Cities and names
Cities and the dead
Cities and the sky
Continuous cities
Hidden cities

Within each group there are five cities, numbered thusly:

Cities and memory 1
Cities and memory 2
Cities and memory 3
Cities and memory 4
Cities and memory 5

These sketches are scattered throughout the book in nine numbered sections. The middle sections (2-8) contain five fables each, while the first and last sections contain ten each. The order of the first section seems arbitrary:

1
Cities and memory 1
Cities and memory 2
Cities and desire 1
Cities and memory 3
Cities and desire 2
Cities and signs 1
Cities and memories 4
Cities and desire 3
Cities and signs 2
Thin cities 1

But a glance at the second section reveals the secret:

2
Cities and memory 5
Cities and desire 4
Cities and signs 3
Thin cities 2
Trading cities 1

The numerical pattern is repeated through the remaining sections, save the last, whose order is now predetermined:

9
Cities and the dead 5
Cities and the sky 4
Continuous cities 3
Hidden cities 2
Cities and the sky 5
Continuous cities 4
Hidden cities 3
Continuous cities 5
Hidden cities 4
Hidden cities 5

The significance of the book's mathematical structure is murky. Either it is done purely for effect (unlikely), or it is invested with a meaning I've not been able to decipher (likely).

Eventually I found myself imagining the book as a deck of cards, the kind used for divination, partly because of the elusive meaning of the tales, and partly because the eleven city groups reminded me of suits.

Were I to read this book again, I might forsake the order of the sketches as they appear in the book, and read them group by group in correct numerical sequence.