Yesterday (29 September) was Miguel de Cervantes’s birthday. I’m sure you’re still recovering from the huge party you held celebrating the life of the author of what many people have called the “greatest novel ever written.” The rest of you are wondering, so who is Cervantes?
Incidentally, I can be a little sarcastic from time to time. I’m allowed. I’m an English professor.
Cervantes wrote a book you probably have heard about but have never read cover to cover. The reason you probably never read it cover to cover is because its 940 pages long (at least the best translation by Edith Grossman is), and your high school English teacher knew that if she assigned it you wouldn’t get anything else done that semester. Don Quixote is a really long book. But you should read it cover to cover anyhow. Not because it’s good for us to read great literature or because educated people have read the great books or because it would be something to brag about on a college entrance essay, but because it’s a really entertaining story. And funny. Even sad.
Incidentally, I like to use sentence fragments. I’m allowed. I’m an English professor.
I’m also allowed to recommend good books, and in fact, I’m probably expected to. So I’m recommending Don Quixote today, the day after we celebrate Cervantes’s 461st birthday. Because it’s entertaining, funny, and even sad.
Let me know what you think of it.
http://www.bethelcollege.edu/blogs/?p=1202
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