My copy of Don Quixote is showing some serious wear, but it seems sort of appropriate really, considering what Don Quixote has managed to put up with for some 500+ pages. I take him with me every day on my morning bus ride and read at least a chapter or two. He tends to get slammed around in my book bag, and a rip has appeared in the cover, but he has been my companion for these last twelve weeks or so, and I have gotten quite used to him. Victoria just wrote about getting a big dose of DQ. I know if I attempted to read 50-60 pages in one go each week, it wouldn't happen. For some reason I can't read DQ fast. I definitely need to read more than a few pages at a time here and there, however. So daily readings seem to work the best for me. On occasion I think how nice it would be to take a different book with me in the morning, but when I eventually finish I think I am going to feel sort of bereft not to have DQ with me.
I feel like I am reading rather superficially, however. I feel like I should be taking notes, or writing more posts about DQ's adventures. Instead I am just letting the story wash over me and letting myself be entertained. I wonder if I have approached this particular book in the wrong way. Is there a wrong way to read a book? Am I missing all the wonderful insights in this book that make it so great? Or does that all come later in discussion and further readings? I have a feeling that sometime later when I am reading something else entirely I am going to have this wonderful epiphany and things are going to mesh and I am going to see just why DQ is considered so great.
I really do think I am going to look at the world in an ever so slightly different way than did before reading Don Quixote. I think that there are situations in life that are very Don Quixote-esque. The film Lost in La Mancha seems the perfect example. I came across this purely by chance at the library. I have yet to watch it, but I am quite looking forward to it. Has anyone seen it? A description of the film:
"For years, one of filmmaker Terry Gilliam's great dreams was to make a screen adaptation of Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra's classic tale Don Quixote, and in 2000 it looked as if his dream was to become a reality. In collaboration with Tony Grisoni, Gilliam had written a script called The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, in which a 20th century advertising man accidentally travels back in time and is mistaken by Don Quixote for his faithful companion, Sancho Panza. After ten years of shopping the project to American studios with no success, Gilliam and his producers had secured financing for the film from a consortium of European sources, and Johnny Depp had been cast as the time-tripping adman, with the venerable French actor Jean Rochefort as Don Quixote. However, as the production moved closer to its start date, more and more things began to go wrong -- contracts went unsigned, key cast and crew members had not yet arrived, and the carefully prepared budget seemed stressed to the breaking point. Nevertheless, Gilliam soldiered on, but after a mere six days of shooting, during which Spanish Air Force jets ruined several takes, flash floods destroyed several sets, and Gilliam struggled to keep his dream afloat, Rochefort suffered a severe back injury. The film's financiers decided to cash in their chips and pulled the plug in order to cash in on their insurance, though Gilliam struggled for months afterward to find a way to put the production back on track. Documentary filmmakers Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe had been invited by Gilliam to make a film about the production of The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, and after shooting 80 hours of footage of the chaotic pre-production process as well as the aborted shooting schedule, they instead created Lost In La Mancha, a look at the "un-making" of the film, which along with the story of the project's brief rise and messy collapse, featured a look at several completed scenes from the film, as well as animated versions of the film's storyboards which offered a glimpse of the look and scale of the film Gilliam was attempting to create."
Why does it seem strangely appropriate--or at least not surprising--that the film should not have been finished--"un-made" such as it was? All very Don Quixote-esque, I say.