So it's been over a month and a half and I am still not even halfway through this comedy. Page 444 out of 936, to be exact. What has filled these pages, you may ask? Lunacy, and beautiful women (each more beautiful than the last), and singing, and questionable nudity.
I have, despite my sluggish reading schedule, just finished Part I, and am now on Book II...and I have no idea what just occurred.
Don Quixote has abruptly been pronounced dead, the story having skipped YEARS. First of all, how is this summary-style ending to the first book in any way sensical to the style of the rest of the story?
But there is undeniably an epitaph to his death.
And I was not altogether too upset by this, as I was assuming an end to the insanity that is the Don...
but then...
Cervantes continues the story as if nothing ever happened after a rather scatterminded preface comparing blowing up dogs to writing.
Seriously, what is the intention of this? Cervantes just wanted to keep going and thought that picking up where he had left off the first time was perfectly acceptable after killing the character (ten years later, to my understanding)? Intentional irony for medieval romance or no? I guess anything goes, and that supports the novel.
But then again, living in a delusional world might not be so bad when you're the crazy one. At least he's having fun. I've just gotten laid off from my job, maybe I'll go out as knight-errant. Open casting for squire will be held in my castle.
492 pages to go.
