Lost in La Mancha (2002)

While we're on the topic of Don Quixote, I wanted to mention Terry Gilliam's umpteenth try at filming a movie based on Cervantes' book. There are many articles available, but here are two I liked: Terry Gilliam on finally filming Don Quixote: 'Adam Driver is bankable! Thank God for Star Wars!' and Video: Watch Terry Gilliam talk Don Quixote at Cannes. I love most of Gilliam's films and find myself returning to them again and again. I realize it's not a style for everyone, and even sometimes I weary of the overwhelming parts.

But I do think he is one of the few directors working now that could do a version of Don Quixote justice, although it seems like the film we be more about the idea of Don Quixote than the book itself. I'm OK with that since people seem to many different ways to read the book. As I mentioned in my post on Mark Van Doren's Don Quixote's Profession, he notes

The sign of its simplicity is that it can be summarized in a few sentences. The sign of its mysteriousness is that it can be talked about forever. It has indeed been talked about as no other story ever was. For a strange thing happens to its readers. They do not read the same book. Or if they do, they have different theories about it.

(As an aside, I've updated my post on Don Quixote's Profession to note that the speeches comprising it can also be found, much cheaper, in Van Doren's The Happy Critic, published in 1961).

Gilliam's trouble in trying to make a Quixote-related film has been well documented (see here for a nice recap of his last attempt), and he's not the only one that encountered trouble on such a project. I decided to watch Lost in La Mancha, the documentary by Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe on the ill-fated filming of The Man Who Killed Don Quixote. This was Fulton and Pepe's second feature documenting a Gilliam Film: The Hamster Factor and Other Tales of Twelve Monkeys was the first. There was no way they could have known when they started covering Gilliam's The Man Who Killed Don Quixote that the project would fall apart when the film's star, Jean Rochefort, became too ill and injured to continue filming.

The problems with the project begin early: funding falls through, actors aren't under contract and don't show up for pre-production, and sets aren't as advertised. Assistant Director Phil Patterson stated it well, noting that working on a project with Gilliam was like riding a wild horse. You grab on to the mane and hold on for the ride of your life. The first scene was shot next to a NATO bombing range, so jets disrupt their attempts to film. Then massive rain and hail wash away that set. Rochefort leaves the set after day six of shooting, never to return. Despite initial claims of force majeure, the insurance company reimbursed investors but ended up owning the script. A few of the clips filmed are shown and they barely hint at what might have been. The difficulty in filming a movie, especially one with a strict budget and tight schedule, comes through in every scene. Similar to Cervantes' story, reality keeps intruding on the dream.

Gilliam handles everything thrown at him with aplomb. He has a few "blow up" moments, but they're surprisingly tame in relation to what he's facing. The stand-out moments for me was Patterson putting Jean Rochefort's health above making the film and Terry Gilliam sticking with Patterson even when he didn't agree with him. If watching someone under intense pressure reveals their true nature, these are two outstanding guys.

I found watching Lost in La Mancha frustrating at times, even though I knew exactly how things would turn out, because I wanted them to succeed. And I ardently hope that this go-round will be successful. If you go to rent Lost in La Mancha or check it out from a library, make sure there is a second disc including extras. On it is a 54 minute interview between Salman Rushdie and Terry Gilliam from 2002. It's an entertaining romp through their views on different types of books and movies. I found myself wishing it would go on for much longer.

Don Quixote's Profession by Mark Van Doren

Don Quixote’s Profession by Mark Van Doren
New York: Columbia University Press, 1958. Print.
Drawings by Joseph Low

Mark Van Doren in Quiz Show, answering a question about the meaning of Don Quixote:
"It means, if you want to be a knight, act like a knight."

My great friends do not know me.
Hamlet in the halls,
Achilles by the river
Feasting with the Duke see no one there
Like me, like Mark Van Doren, who grows daily
Older while they look not, change not,
Die not save the deaths their masters made.
- The Autobiography of Mark Van Doren (page 351)

My purpose in this case, and I did to keep it a secret from the class, was to examine the various ways in which the greatest storytellers had put divine things and human things together. The ultimate dimension, I suggested, was given to narrative by the presence in it of gods or their equivalent. In the case of Cervantes I promised that it would be difficult to say what the equivalent was, yet I supposed it was there, or else Don Quixote would not be the supreme novel it is. Reading it slowly in preparation for the course, listening to every word of it in Motteux's joyful translation, I had fallen hopelessly in love with it as I continue every year to do.
- The Autobiography of Mark Van Doren (pages 283-4)

In November 1956, Mark Van Doren gave a series of three lectures at Emory University about Don Quixote. In 1958, Columbia University Press put out this slim volume (just over 100 pages) containing those lectures. Van Doren talks about his reluctance to attempt a talk on Don Quixote since it wasn't just a subject, "It was a world." As he ends his introduction he notes, "This is not all I have to say about Don Quixote, but for me it is the central thing and I am willing to let it go at that." It is a pleasing and challenging little book that I highly recommend for anyone that has an interest in Cervantes.

Van Doren begins with a simplistic synopsis of the book (see the link below to Simon Leys article for that summary). He notes that the novel is "both simple and mysterious" and moves on to his central argument:

The sign of its simplicity is that it can be summarized in a few sentences. The sign of its mysteriousness is that it can be talked about forever. It has indeed been talked about as no other story ever was. For a strange thing happens to its readers. They do not read the same book. Or if they do, they have different theories about it. ...

He suffered from no delusion as to his identity. It was merely that he had been reading many books, and out of them he formed a conception of life as he would henceforth live it if he could. ...

It is well to observe that imitation was his aim. Not impersonation, and not deception. He knew very well who he was. The only question was whether he would be able to act the part he had chosen. (from pages 3, 4, & 5)

That is the focus of his lectures: Don Quixote was not mad—he knew exactly what he was doing when he was imitating a knight. I'm not sure I completely buy into his argument, but it is an extremely fun ride following his thoughts on the book and its central character. He begins by looking at why Don Quixote chose the role of knight. Since he was so well read, he could have imitated a scholar or a shepherd, or even a religious occupation. Van Doren believes Don Quixote chose knighthood as his role because of the learning involved in being one: "The discipline of knighthood was to him the sum of all the arts and sciences; was wisdom itself; was a liberal education." This might present a problem in looking at his role models, such as Amadis of Gaul, who was no scholar. But Amadis didn't have to talk about being a knight—he was one. Wisdom and learning play a part in imitating a knight. As Van Doren mentions later in the lectures, "To act as he [Don Quixote] acts is more than to ape; to imitate as he does is finally to understand."

Van Doren theorizes that Don Quixote "was first and last an actor, a skillful and conscious actor, who wrote his own play as he proceeded and of course kept the center of its stage." Here we run into one of the many similarities with Hamlet. Was he mad because he acted madly? Did he confuse the role he was playing with the role? Early on in the novel, after his first sally, a neighbor farmer finds and rescues Don Quixote. Upon hearing the old man calling himself the names of knightly characters, the farmer tells him that he is only the honorable gentleman Señor Quijana. "Don Quixote answers him with seven famous words. 'I know very well who I am.' This could mean, of course, that he knows he is Baldwin or Abindarez and therefore is mad. But it could also mean just what it says." Possible, but the knight then rambles on about who all he could be, too.

Van Doren mentions the troubling aspect of doing "violence to harmless creatures who get in his way," such as the poor sheep he assaults, mistaking them for armies. Or the funeral procession he disrupts, maiming one of the mourners. It's one thing to risk his own life when tilting at windmills, but something quite different "when he hurts people who in no sense deserve it. His acting now becomes extravagant with a vengeance; his role grows ruthless; he behaves more like a lunatic than like a knight; he is fanatical, as if he thought himself, like Providence, privileged to seem cruel." Van Doren points out there is a rivalry between the concept of behaving outside the law because he is just and the law itself. In order to maintain his role, Don Quixote has to behave in the former manner. And when he does make mistakes, he always blames the misinterpretation of appearances, whether through sorcerers or spells. If things had really been as he had interpreted them, his behavior and actions would have been justified. Van Doren uses this, though, to demonstrate Don Quixote wasn't mad. A madman would have continued these exploits whether or not he thought he could achieve his desires. Don Quixote continues because he believes everything is within his grasp. As he constantly puts it, his goal would have been successful in all of his failures if he had not been deceived. This delusion, then, supports his sanity.

One trait Van Doren points out that proves Don Quixote's sanity is his humor. He is able to laugh, not just at others, but at himself, too. After pointing out several examples, Van Doren states, "So much humor, so easily and so naturally expressed, is not the mark of a madman. It is not demonic humor; it is pleasantry, it is power and wisdom at play... ." Another point Van Doren highlights is that when Don Quixote is alone, which isn't often, "He is controlled and serene." Another is the understanding Don Quixote had of the part he played and his remarkable ability to play it well. If he was a poor actor, we wouldn't be talking about him. Although I have to wonder if he was a superb actor and never failed, would our take on his madness/acting change?

There's also the logic that Don Quixote uses, such as his paying penance in the mountains for Dulcinea. As he explains to Sancho, running mad without a cause shows the perfection of his undertaking. There's a certain logic in his madness, but whether it's of a sane man or a calculating madman I can't say. He understands that pretending isn't enough...as actors would say, he has to sell it. We see similar acts of madness in the novel. Carrasco fails to defeat Don Quixote when pretending to be the Knight of the Mirrors because we was a poor actor. He didn't believe what he was doing to the same extent as Don Quixote. The story of Basil winning the hand of Quiteria through his acting skills, though, demonstrates ingenuity in playing a part to earn what he wants, and Don Quixote admires him for it. As the novel progresses, the reader has to wonder which of the other characters are crazy. Characters humoring Don Quixote or trying to outwit him can seem crazier than their target.

As Van Doren concludes, it may be that Don Quixote was the "most perfect knight that ever lived; the only one, in fact, we can believe; but Cervantes never asks us to arrive at that conclusion." One of the most successful of Cervantes' achievements was to save the literature of chivalry and knight-errants by ridiculing it, a treatment that also deepens into a love for the characters he has created. In the move Quiz Show, Charles Van Doren goes to visit his father Mark Van Doren in his classroom. As Charles enters the classroom, his father is answering a question from a group of students (including Ethan Hawke, who recently wrote a book concerning knights) about what Don Quixote is about. "It means, if you want to be a knight, act like a knight," the elder Van Doren replies, and I can think of no better summary for this entertaining book. I enjoyed the confidence he has in his arguments, even when I don't fully agree with him.

I am hopeful someone is able to put these lectures back in print. (Hint hint NYRB Classics!) Very highly recommended.

Other works mentioned in this post:

• The Autobiography of Mark Van Doren by Mark Van Doren. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1958. Print.
• "The Imitation of Our Lord Don Quixote" by Simon Leys. The New York Review of Books, June 11, 1998 issue
• Quiz Show. Burbank, CA: Hollywood Pictures Home Video, 1994.

Update (23 May 2016): After looking high and low for a copy of Don Quixote's Profession I could afford, I gave up and requested a copy via interlibrary loan. My post is based on the original book. I have since found out that Van Doren's The Happy Critic contains the text of Don Quixote's Profession and can be found for much cheaper prices. It does not contain Van Doren's introduction or Joseph Low's illustrations, but for the difference in price (under $10 vs. greater than $50 for DQP), I wanted to post about this avenue of availability. I hope to post on some of the other essays in The Happy Critic soon.

"Discover Don Quijote de la Mancha" Live Session 3

The third live session hosted by Universidad Francisco Marroquín's MOOC on Don Quijote. It felt like this was going over previous territory, but that was fine by me. One of my questions had to do with film versions of the novel, especially since I had recently read something that Terry Gilliam might be attempting to film the novel again. I like Dr. Graf's response that the novel would probably work best as a TV series...the more I think about it, that does seem the best approach. Regardless, I want to pass on the Royal Shakespeare Company's production of Don Quixote. I have no idea what a stage adaptation of the novel could be like, but I give them credit for attempting it. And I look forward to hearing more about it.

One of my questions mentions Mark Van Doren's Don Quixote's Profession (1958, Columbia University Press), a book that gathered three lectures Van Doren given at Emory University in November 1956. Even though I disagree with Van Doren on a few points in his interpretation, I find many great points in his talks. One isn't exactly a new concept, but it's one I'm happy to pass on:

We may insist that instead of destroying the literature of knight-errantry Cervantes saved it by producing the one treatment of the subject that can be read forever; and he did this by permitting his satire to ripen into comedy, his ridicule to deepen into love; yet over the centuries we still see his smile, and we can wonder how much of it is pity for us because we cannot leave his book alone.

The point I focused on in that quote that was Cervantes made sure that chivalric novels lived on by satirizing them. If you want something to die a quiet death, you ignore it. If you make fun of it (especially in a great novel), you've made sure they will live as long as your novel does. Or as I learned growing up (maybe from MAD Magazine?), "we learn the classics so we can mock them."

Update (5 Mar 2016): When I get around to posting on Don Quixote's Profession, I need to mention 1994's movie Quiz Show with Paul Scofield as Mark Van Doren. There's a scene where class is letting out at Columbia University and some students (including a young Ethan Hawke), is asking him questions about Cervantes. The point of the novel, says Van Doren, is, "If you want to be a knight, be a knight." (I wonder if there's a tie-in with Hawke's latest book Rules for a Knight). Not to mention this makes me want to go back and re-visit Mark Van Doren's Autobiography.

"Discover Don Quijote de la Mancha" Live Session 2

I'm really enjoying the Universidad Francisco Marroquín's MOOC on Don Quijote and wanted to share the second live session that was held this past Thursday (18 Feb 2016). The session covered questions from Chapters 15 through 28 in Part I. I was fortunate to get a few questions in on the call...enjoy!


Live Session 2 - Discover Don Quijote de la Mancha

If you're interested in digging more into the topic, check out UFM's New Media YouTube page.

Update (22 Feb 2016): When I posted this session, I couldn't find the first session in English. I have since found it and it can be found here.

MOOC: Don Quixote through Universidad Francisco Marroquín

Don Quixote has long been one of my favorite novels. While I have seen several online open courses covering the novel, I've never participated in one until now. I **highly** recommend exploring (or re-reading) the novel along with the course from instructor Eric C. Graf and through the Universidad Francisco Marroquín. I've just finished the first week of the course and thoroughly enjoyed it. Even if you've read the novel several times, I think you will still learn a lot from Graf's presentations. Let me know if you check it out!

Update (27 Jan 2016): The course, as it stands now, only covers Part One of Don Quixote. I failed to make that clear in my post. Regardless, I'm really enjoying the course and learning quite a bit more about the book!

Cervantes Street by Jaime Manrique

Cervantes Street by Jaime Manrique
Akashic Books, 320 pages (paperback)
ISBN 978-1617751264

After reading this review by Lawrence Norfolk about Cervantes Street I was sure I wanted to read the book. The structure of Cervantes Street alternates chapters between the memoirs of Miguel and his rich college friend Luis Lara (with the final chapter told by Lara’s secretary). The opening chapter of each friend sets the stage for what follows in the novel: Cervantes kills a man in a bar fight over his family’s honor and escapes to avoid imprisonment and having his right hand cut off. Lara, after finding out that Cervantes is in love with his intended fiancée, finances Cervantes’ escape, initially from Madrid and ultimately from Spain. What follows in Miguel’s chapters is a speculative biography touching on known points of his life and filling in the unknown with a possible narrative. The speculations include characters and incidents that surface in Cervantes’ plays and novels. Manrique covers Cervantes’ participation in the Battle of Lepanto and his captivity in Algiers for five years before returning to Spain.

While Miguel’s story proves interesting the addition of Luis Lara as Miguel’s archenemy, while almost comic-book like at times, provides the best twists and turns of the story. Lara’s hatred of Miguel colors almost everything he does, changing him into a bitter, warped man. Lara claims to have provided Miguel with the idea for Don Quixote, although Cervantes’ section reflects how much was based on his own experiences.

Consistent with Don Quixote, Manrique's novel contains a lot of irony. One of my favorite turns of fate involves Cervantes' evolution from poet to storyteller. While in captivity he tries to earn money in order to survive by telling stories in the marketplace. A washerwoman upbraids him for his melancholy story, advising him that people want to forget their miserable lives. What Miguel doesn't know at this point (and can never know) is that the more sucessful his stories, the more torture for Luis Lara. Miguel stops mentioning Lara in his memoir, providing another ironic comparison with Lara’s fixation on his former friend. Another playful theme repeatedly occurs in the differences between the two histories—Lara portrays Cervantes in a very different light than Miguel's self-description. One final theme I’ll highlight rests in the comparison between Spain and Algiers. Manrique doesn’t hesitate to point out the cruelty, based on ethnicity or religion, in both locations at the time while avoiding moral relativism.

As in real life, an author going by the pen name of Alonso Fernández de Avellaneda publishes a spurious sequel to Cervantes’ successful first part of Don Quixote and Manrique shows the motivation its release. Even though his story had initially been hijacked, Cervantes has the last word because of his successful second part to Don Quixote: “Worse...—I had not expected, no one had—that in Cervantes’s Part II, the crippled soldier of Lepanto would borrow the adventures and the characters created” by the spurious sequel's author.

It’s a fun, sad story, often mixing both elements at the same time. So why don’t I recommend it without reserve? I’m at a loss to explain, but I have this blog in order to work through such points. Manrique’s novel assists with some of the more esoteric allusions to Cervantes’ work embedded in the story while other references are obvious, such as having Miguel meeting a Sancho Panza in Algiers that resembles Quixote’s character perfectly. When the novel works, which is often, it is a fun read. Take the following example from Cervantes’ first chapter:

Sevilla was a city of witches and enchanters. You had to be careful not to cross a woman, because any female, aristocratic or peasant, married or unmarried, old or young, beautiful or ugly, Christian or Moor, slave or free, could have satanic powers. Witches made red roses bloom in their homes in December. They could make or break marriages, could make grooms hang themselves or evaporate on the eve of the wedding, could make pregnant women give birth to litters of puppies.

Unlucky men who crossed the enchantresses were turned into donkeys. As husbands and lovers disappeared, new donkeys materialized and the women who owned these donkeys took delight in making them carry heavy loads. It was common to see a woman whose husband had vanished go around the city addressing every donkey she saw by her husband’s name. When an ass brayed in response, the woman would drop on her knees, cross herself, and give thanks to God that she had found her husband. If she wanted her man back, she had to buy the donkey from its owner. Then she would go back home, happy to have found her spouse, and spend the rest of her life trying to undo the enchantment. Or she might be just as happy to keep her husband in donkey form. It was said that some of the happiest marriages in Sevilla were between a woman and her ass. …

When a Sevillano allowed inflated notions to swell his head, he was told, “Remember, today you are a man, but tomorrow you may well be a donkey.”

The prose can be florid and overwrought often—how much of that is intended to mimic what would be in the journals of late 16th/early 17th century Spanish poets I’m not sure, but I found it distracting. I found myself not enjoying some descriptions because of such language and some sections felt unnecessary.

An even larger part of my hesitation may be in comparing the book against Stephen Marlowe’s wonderful novel The Death and Life of Miguel de Cervantes, another mock autobiography, even though each book takes a different approach to a similar topic. I would recommend Marlowe's book (although with some reservations…see below) ahead of Cervantes Street.

Knowledge of Cervantes and his work isn’t necessary to enjoy Cervantes Street, although it does help the reader understand more of the relevance of particular anecdotes and appreciate some of the storyline. Another review of the novel can be found at the New York Journal of Books. Jamie Manrique’s site provides an excerpt from the novel. To date I seem to be in the minority in hesitations about the novel.

Sidenote: While I loved Marlowe’s book and highly recommend it, I do need to note some of my qualifications or reservations in that commendation. The biggest qualification would be that it’s been over a decade since I’ve read it, well before I began keeping notes on my reading. If I remember correctly, Marlowe doesn't make the parallels between his mock biography and Cervantes' works as explicit as Manrique does, requiring more familiarity with them to fully appreciate the book. What I remember, though, is a wonderful novel that was a little too long and occasionally strayed too much into far-fetched scenarios. But that’s the point of these novels, both spinning an entertaining story to fill the sizeable gaps of Cervantes' biography.