Hello, there.
So who is Don Quixote and why is he such a literary and cultural figure?
One day in November when I was first starting to work as the writing lab teacher, Blaze Newman came through the lab, and we started talking about the book I had on the desk, Ulysses by James Joyce.
I knew she had read it in a book club with a few fellow students when I was attending SDA in 2011. It assembled by a student who enjoyed Portrait of the Artist as A Young Man so much he wanted to read the sequel. And so it began the Ulysses book club with Blaze Newman who surprisingly had never read the book. I thought for sure she would have read and reread the Irish Author’s masterpiece as she had taught Portrait so many times before.
Nevertheless, I ask her to read it with me. I wanted someone who had trudged through the marshes and dead grass land of this seemingly incomprehensible text. She said, “No, I have already read it,” as flat as Illinois.
In hindsight, I totally understand why she turned down my offer. I finished the book not a week before the first meeting for the Don Quixote Book Club.
Alas, the following conversation occurred mostly to show her how many big books I had read, and well versed in English Literature–this is the start of the Don Quixote Book Club:
Adam: Blaze read Ulysses with me.
Blaze: No I had already read it.
A: Well what about Moby Dick.
B: I have never read it.
A: Let’s read it.
B: You have already read it, so no.
A: What about Don Quixote?
B: You’ve never read it?
A: No
B: Okay, we’ll start next semester.
It went something like that.
I ordered a hardback of the text and sent the details to Blaze. She bought the book and suggested we get others involved.
And so the emails started flowing out, sending them to every staff member of SDA asking them to spread the word to students and everyone they knew. Little response, but as of now we have four dedicated members to this book with background knowledge of poetry, romance, modernist, and literary theory to tackle this text in the infinite wholeness it is.
And as far as I can tell it is the very first novel in the deepest sense of the genre, using both old and implementing new techniques that we can now see influenced everyone we have loved since.
In essence this book is the everything of all books. Your desert island text that will keep you entertained and learning for the rest of your life–if you’re into that kind of work. But those of us reading the book and showing up to the meetings are just looking for some fun after school on Tuesdays. To drink some tea and eat some chips and laugh at the mostly hilarious Don Quixote of La Mancha and his loyal squire Sancho Panza.
Next time, we’ll talk about what we had read.
Thanks.
