John Cage
Yes, I get that sometimes it is just boring and one needs to move on, but I also agree that sometimes one just needs to learn to sit with it.
I sat with 15 CD's.
It took only took me until disc #4 to sit easily.
By disc #6 it was sort of like meditation.
When it got to the meditation stage, I thought I might be day dreaming through it. I re-listened to the second half of a disc to see if I had absorbed it, and I remembered every word. I had been paying attention.
And even when I was in the early stages of the book, the discs went very fast. Every time I looked, I was well into a disc or nearly done with a disc or the machine was telling me to move on to the next disc.
Wikipedia:
"Published in two volumes a decade apart, in 1605 and 1615, Don Quixote is considered the most influential work of literature from the Spanish Golden Age and the entire Spanish literary canon. As a founding work of modern Western literature, and one of the earliest canonical*** novels, it regularly appears high on lists of the greatest works of fiction ever published. In one such list, Don Quixote was cited as the "best literary work ever written"."
***Confederacy of Dunces is also a Canonical novel.
I listened to the first volume (published in 1605). I think I will listen to the second half at some point, but I have two other things I need to listen to this next week. So I am taking a break between sections.
The first thing I wanted to clarify is the whole book is not Don Quixote and windmills. Windmills only are a tiny part of it in one section.
Excerpt:
"Just then they came in sight of thirty or forty windmills that rise from that plain. And no sooner did Don Quixote see them that he said to his squire, "Fortune is guiding our affairs better than we ourselves could have wished. Do you see over yonder, friend Sancho, thirty or forty hulking giants? I intend to do battle with them and slay them. With their spoils we shall begin to be rich for this is a righteous war and the removal of so foul a brood from off the face of the earth is a service God will bless." "What giants?" asked Sancho Panza. "Those you see over there," replied his master, "with their long arms. Some of them have arms well nigh two leagues in length." "Take care, sir," cried Sancho. "Those over there are not giants but windmills. Those things that seem to be their arms are sails which, when they are whirled around by the wind, turn the millstone." —Part 1, Chapter VIII. Of the valourous Don Quixote's success in the dreadful and never before imagined Adventure of the Windmills, with other events worthy of happy record."
He does go on to fight the windmills in this section. It is a short fight. And I don't believe there is any other mention of windmills in the whole first volume.
Why did I read this book? It was on the list of things read (in the past) by one of my classic book groups.
Two of the members of that group and I email back and forth as I work through their (prior years) reading list. And as I started on Don Quixote, one of the email people (Ashley) told me she was not able to read it. She started it and could not keep with it as it seemed to be Don Quixote doing one stupid thing after another.
The first part of the first volume sort of sets Don Quixote up as a dingleberry. It shows him doing one stupid thing after another, establishing how far off reality base he really is. When I was in the midst of this part of the reading I wondered - is this an early 1600's version of The Three Stooges? I do not care for The Three Stooges. Having Ashley say she was not able to read it, I gave my self permission to stop at any point.
I have gone through this getting started/can I read it? feeling with Bleak House and The Brother's Karamazov. Both of those books took a while for me to get in to them. A lot of that feeling is the style of writing. They do not jump into the story. It takes the authors a long time to give you what they feel is important background information.
I had no problems understanding the language. I am sure I missed all kinds of things, but I did not read Spark Notes as I went. I just retained what I retained and let it go at that. If this book were to come up in my other classic reading group, I would not reread the book, I would read Spark notes instead.
As I was in the midst of reading, youngest commented she noticed a reference to Don Quixote in something she was reading. I sort of felt the same way about this book that I felt about Uncle Tom's Cabin. It seems like I have read dozens of references over the years to both these books, maybe even a hundred references each. I wanted to at least try to read them simply because they are such famous classic books. And I did.
