Don Quixote: The Original "Bromance" Novel
Reading
A novel of Don Quixote: The Original "Bromance"
This book shows the power of literature. It's a very good reminder of why we read why we watch movies. Why we need fiction and imagination. The Quixote is so important that every novel that comes after the Quixote is bought a footnote on the Quixote. Facebook is basically the first bromance ever told. It's the story of true likely friends that go on and about adventures for me, it's really the story of an older man who has lost his mind over his obsession with literature and decides to go and live these adventures of a time past and little by little through his deep and growing friendship with Sancho. He recovers his mind and so ultimately it's the journey of one man finding out who he really is.
It is very relevant because Don Quixote represents the highest aspirations that human beings have. Because the book puts this world of imagination against this terrible, horrible reality that this early modern Spain. You're reading a novel from 400 years ago, and yet the challenges of understanding one's own identity are very much pertinent today and valuable. I have read the Quixote maybe 25 times and it's always a new book. My mentor, when I was a student, I used to tell me that the Quixote is not a book of issues but of tissues because it has so many layers. Like an onion that you layer and you find more and you take this new layer and you find more and you continue like that endlessly. Of course, Don Quixote has a failure after a failure. But at the same time, we laugh a lot.
We enjoy the ride because it's so well depicted. So you laugh, but Don Quixote begins to develop and becomes more individualized. You begin to appreciate everything that he stands for. He wants to renovate society to change society. He wants to help the poor, he wants to redeem those that are oppressed. And you begin to realize that this is something very substantial, very significant. This is the ultimate novel because it's just so tremendously pleasurable. It's just a tremendously fun read.