A Common Reader is . . . . . . written by Tom Cunliffe, of East Sussex, England. It consists of book reviews and more general articles about reading and books and currently receives over 4000 unique visitors each month. So far 202 book reviews have been published.
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 Along with Stu of Winston’s Dad’s Blog, I am reading Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes at the rate of 92 pages a week (it will take us ten weeks to complete the book). We are using the acclaimed 2003 translation by Edith Grossman whose Wikipedia entry suggests that she deserves a review of her own – I’d recommend anyone who reads Don Quixote to read the interview with her here.
I’m not going to provide background information on the book or any sense of literary criticism – there are vast amounts of material already on the net including a comprehensive and highly informative Wikipedia entry. I shall instead concentrate as usual on my reading experience, what I thought of the book, passages I particularly enjoyed, overall impressions.
Firstly, I was impressed with the sheer modernity of this book. De Cervantes’ humour and satire is bang up to date, and the whole book has a freshness about it which made me feel it could be a modern novel. It wasn’t a difficult read, but raced along from one episode to another with terrific pace. If the next eight hundred pages are going to be anything like the first hundred that I’m really not going to be bored in the company of Don Quixote. Let me just pick up a few points that struck me -
Reading can make you go mad
Well, we all know that – Timothy Ryback’s book Hitler’s Private Library shows the power of literature to shape character with disastrous results. Don Quixote developed an obsession with “books of chivalry” and read them with such devotion and enthusiasm that the he let his affairs go to pot and “with these words and phrases the poor gentleman lost his mind”. In fact he read from dusk to dawn and sunrise to sunset and was caught up in so much reading “that his brains dried up”. A warning there for book bloggers I think. This takes me back to being eighteen and reading the whold of Lord of the Rings in one weekend and expecting to see hobbits in the woods when I next took a walk in the country (a belief that soon faded I’m pleased to say).
When things go wrong carry on regardless
I love the way Don Quixote made a helmet out of cardboard and tested it by striking it twice with his sword, only to find it hacked to pieces. He promptly made another, placed a few strips of iron inside it and “not wanting to put it to the test” accepted it as an extremely fine sallet”. Now, that’s really great – somethings going to fail the test – solution: don’t test it.
 Windmills at Campo de Criptana in La Mancha Don’t let facts get in the way of a great idea
Poor Don Quixote. To him the cod at the inn was trout, the prostitutes were ladies, the inkeeper the castellan of the castle and the gelder of hogs (now there’s a job title) was a minstrel. This was self-delusion on a grand scale. As an aside, I like the Monty Pythonish “spam” equivalent of the inn-keeper’s cod, when Don Quixote was offered cod, cod-fish, salt cod or smoked cod.
Burning books doesn’t actually cure the fever
When the housekeeper failed to exorcise the enchanter that lived in Don Quixote’s books by sprinking them with hyssop and holy water, then a great book burning took place. Not only were Don Quixote’s books burned by the priest and the barber, they actually bricked up the door to the library and told Don Quixote that an enchanter had come on a cloud and damaged his house. And Don Quixote actually believed them!
Modernism is actually quite old
I love the way that when telling of Don Quixote’s fight with the Basque, de Cervantes interrupts the story to tell his readers that the account of the fight he was reading ended part way through. He digresses for a few pages to tell his readers how he tracked down another book which contained the rest of the story and arranged for its translation. This concept of the author suddenly breaking into his own story to talk to the reader directly is a feature of many books of the last century, even as recently as Jonathan Coe’s new book The Terrible History of Maxwell Sim which uses exactly the same device.
A great humourist can also excel in serious passages
The story of the ill-fated Grisóstomo who fell in love with the beautiful but chaste Marcela is a masterpiece of lyrical writing. Marcels’a lengthy speech to the mourners at Grisóstomo’s funeral is exceptionally beautiful -
Just as the viper does not deserve to be blamed for its venom, although it kills, since it was given the venom by nature, I do not deserve to be reproved for being beautiful, for beauty in the chaste woman is like a distant fire or sharp-edged sword: they do not burn or cut the person who does not approach them. Honour and virtue are adornments of the soul, without which the body is not truly beautiful.
So, to conclude for now, I am pleased that Stu challenged me to read Don Quixote with him. I can see its going to be a fascinating journey and I’m glad that I embarked on it.
Other references
Lisa Hill wrote a comprehensive and insightful article on Don Quixote on ANZ LitLovers here.
Image credits
The image of Windmills at Campo de Criptana in La Mancha was taken by Lourdes Cardenal and is licensed for public use under a GNU free documentation license. See here for details.
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 I was drawn to Rhyming Life and Death when I read on the cover that it reflects on “writing, reading and the elusive chimera of literary posterity” . I have a category of book on this blog entitled “books about books”, and as an avid reader, a new addition to it is a reward in itself.
Amos Oz is renowned in Israel for his courageous political stance as a secular social-democrat, having lived on a Kibbutz for thirty years and being a leading voice in the peace movement. He has won numerous literary awards as listed in his Wikipedia entry.
In his latest novel Rhyming Life and Death, Oz addresses the nature of writing fiction by letting his readers in on the internal reflections of the “Author”, a fictional writer, who is invited to attend a public reading of his work in Tel Aviv. During the following eight hours we read of his preparation for the reading, the event itself and then his wanderings around the city through the night-time.
The Author anticipates the questions he is likely to be asked by the audience after the reading -
- Why do you write?
- Why do you write the way you do?
- Are you trying to influence your readers and if so how?
- Do you constantly cross out and correct or do you write straight out of your head?
- What is it like to be a famous writer?
- Do you write with a pen or a computer?
. . . and so on, and on, and on. The Author sits in a café down the road from the literary centre to try to prepare his answers to these questions, but his thoughts are taken up by the waitress, with her “shapely, attractive legs”. He steals a look at her face, and finds it pleasant, sunny, with her hair tied back with a red rubber band. While he is waiting for his omelette and salad he begins to imagine her life, giving her the name “Ricky” as he writes her personal history in his head. We, the readers, are drawn into the creative process, as “Ricky” takes form before our eyes (this is perhaps a little like looking into a mirror placed in front of another mirror – the fictional “Author” creates a fictional personal for the twice-fictional “Ricky”).
Continue reading Review Rhyming Life and Death – Amos Oz
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 British readers may remember Vitali Vitaliev from his time as Moscow correspondent on David Frost’s 1990s television programme, Saturday Night Clive, and many broadcasts on BBC Radio 4. Vitali was born in the Ukraine, eventually defecting to the West, living in Britain and Australia, and eventually returning to London where he is a successful journalist and writer.
Life as A Literary Device, is partly biographical, partly reportage, and partly miscellaneous musing on life. The book consists of ”seemingly disjointed snippets of real life, they connect by association alone – the random pieces of coloured glass that from themselves into a pattern if viewed through that wonderful children’s toy, the kaleidoscope”.
Early in the book he writes of being influenced by the Russian writer Valentin Kataev, the founder of a literary style which he called “mauvism” – “a literary device consisting of the complete negation of all literary devices”. The term mauvism comes from the French word “mauvais” meaning “bad”, and as Kataev himself wrote, “I am the founder of the latest literary school, the mauvistes, the essence of which is that since everyone nowadays writes very well, you must write badly, as badly as possible, then you will attract attention”.
I am pleased to say that Vitaliev does not write badly – far from it in fact, but he has certainly held to the principle of mauvism in writing a book for the Internet age where ”one website routinely carries links to many others. You open a link in a story that you are reading and it takes you away to another story loosely connected to the first one yet years and/or miles away from it; you then close the link and return to the story you were reading in the first place”.
Continue reading Review: Life as a Literary Device – Vitali Vitaliev
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 Like so many English people, I enjoy going to France and experiencing a country very different to my own. I live near a ferry port and often see ships sailing off to cross the Channel and I always experience a touch of yearning to be sailing to the land of good wine and different (I won’t say “better”) food.
My nostalgia for France is fed when I turn to Guy Savage’s book blog, His Futile Preoccupations. Guy has a love of French literature and has read far more Balzac, de Maupassant and Zola than most readers. Being conscious of a Balzac-shaped gap in my reading I decided on Guy’s recommendation to begin with Père Goriot. Guy reviewed this himself but I have not reminded myself of what he wrote and will only go back to re-read his review when I have finished my own – such is my fear of being influenced by someone who knows far more about Balzac’s books than I do.
Père Goriot forms part of Balzac’s life-work, La Comédie humaine, and he placed it in the section Scenes of Private Life. It tells the story of Eugène de Rastignac, a young man who comes to Paris to study law. His widowed mother has gone out of her way to provide his means of support at great cost to herself and his two sisters, and it is her hope that Eugène will make his way in the world and restore their fortune.
Continue reading Review: Père Goriot – Honoré de Balzac
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I am proud to be featured today on kimbofo’s Triple Choice Tuesday where I have selected my favourite book, a book that changed my world, and a book that deserves a wider audience.
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 Alan Furst’s elegantly-written novels about spies in World War II have become must-have acquisitions for this common reader. I say acquisitions but in fact I ordered Spies of the Balkans from the library before they even had it in stock, and I was able to get my hands on one of the eight copies they bought (why is it more satisfying to see the first date stamp in a library book than to actually buy the thing yourself?).
Spies of the Balkans was no disappointment. We find ourselves in Salonika in 1940, with Greece wondering if (when?) the Germans are going to invade.
Costa Zannis is a former detective who now handles political cases, mingling with the international cast of characters who have a range of motives for being in the port. The Balkan nations are dividing into those which support the Axis powers and those who’s fierce nationalism leads them to plan for guerilla wars in the mountains.
Zannis is an honourable man and agrees to help a German Jewish woman from Berlin who is in the process of setting up a route to smuggle Jews out of Germany eastwards and onto Istanbul. The British get wind of this and approach Zannis, applying pressure on him to smuggle one of their scientists out of France before the Germans get their hands on him.
Furst is a master of what in the world of cinema would be called “noir”. The characters, Zannis included, seem alienated from normal life. They inhabit dingy bars, arrange assignations on street corners and have to disappear into the shadows when cars containing their enemies nose into view. They have hopeless love affairs with old-flames before falling for the wife of a notorious gangster. Above all, the filthy game of spying infests their lives with its secrecy, its betrayals and its thorough-going nastiness.
Continue reading Review: Spies of the Balkans – Alan Furst
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 To Be Read pile This is one of those weeks when although I have been reading at odd moments, I have been so busy with other things – friends, family and voluntary work that A Common Reader has had to take a lesser place in my life.
I regret not being able to respond to people’s comments by visiting their own websites and not following up new posts my contacts have published. Normal service will begin to be restored on Monday when hopefully the pressure of other things will have eased.
Until then, here is a photograph of part of my “to be read” pile. I have other books too, and also a backlog of about a dozen reviews to write – some will just have to be cut I think.
 Michelham Priory I am working this weekend at Michelham Priory, East Sussex where a ” country fair” requires a lot of extra help. This property owned by Sussex Archaeological Trust dates back over 800 years and is rich in atmosphere. A perfect place to sit in a quiet corner reading.
Tomorrow there will be little chance for that as there will be demonstrations by wood-carvers, archers, farriers, falconers, dog-trainers, jewellery makers and every possible country craft and activity you can imagine. I am not sure what the Augustinian friars who first lived on this moated island would make of it all.
I look forward to writing again about books early next week.
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This is the 200th full-length review I’ve published on A Common Reader. A sort of milestone. . .
I have been subscribing to Granta magazine for quite a few years now and enjoy its quality writing on a vast range of subjects. Its a well-produced journal, not the sort of thing you want to throw away, and I find with most editions that there are one or two articles which still in my mind and make me want to come back to them, often years later. Articles (both fiction and factual) are written by a wide range of writers, including such notables Jonathan Raban, Peter Carey, Salman Rushdie, Lionel Shriver, Paul Auster, Elaine Showalter and countless others.
Every so often a book comes your way which is satisfying in many different ways. In Are We Related? The New Granta Book of the Family the writing is excellent and the variety of pieces is sufficiently wide that every one comes as a surprise when you read it. The physicality of the book is pleasing – it feels big and substantial, the typeface and layout work well. Its a book you can dip in and out of and as you read it, you know its going to remain on your shelf to be dipped in and out of for years to come.
Liz Jobey (Associated Editor of Granta) has selected 27 pieces about the family, taken from Granta magazines from 1995 to the present day, all of which, whether fiction of non-fiction, explore the complexity of family relationships and the stresses and strains they generate (and occasional joys).
Continue reading Review – Are We Related? Granta Books
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 Sometimes I think I must be missing something. Thomas Bernhard, according to his Wikipedia entry “is widely considered to be one of the most important German-speaking authors of the postwar era”. The novel before me, Old Masters, has its own Wikipedia page, and has been selected by Penguin to be included in its glossy new Central European Classics range. Well, I struggled through to the end (somehow) and was left feeling that this Emperor certainly has no clothes.
An 82 year old man, the musicologist Reger, sits on a settee in the Bordone Room of the Viennese Kunsthistoirisches Museum, contemplating Tintoretto’s painting, The White Bearded Man – as he has done for four or five hours every second day for the last 30 years. While doing this he rails against society, art, his fellow men, the state of Vienna, even the condition of the cities public lavatories. His thoughts are communicated to the reader by his friend Atzbacher, who seems in awe of the great musicologist and shares his dismal world view. The only other character in the book is the gallery steward Irrsigler, who has assisted Reger over the last 30 years by making sure that no-one else sits on the settee when Reger is due one of his visits.
Reger has so many chips on his shoulders it is almost impossible to count them:
The art hanging on these walls is nothing but state art, at least that hanging here in the picture gallery of the Kunsthistoirisches Museum. All the paintings hanging on these wall are nothing but painting by state artists. Always only a visage, never a face. Always only lineaments, never features. All these painters were nothing but utterly mendacious state artists, pampering to the vanity of their clients, not even Rembrandt is an exception. Just look as Velazquez, nothing but state art, or Lotto or Giotto, always only state art, just as that dreadful proto-Nazi and pre-Nazi Durer, who put nature on his canvas and killed it, this horrible Durer from the depth of his soul.
Continue reading Review: Old Masters – Thomas Bernard
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Noted novelist and translator Tim Parks has departed from his usual themes to write this autobiographical account of his journey from a life dominated by acute pain to one where a reasonable equilibrium between body and soul enables him to live in relative comfort and healthy productivity.
Teach Us To Sit Still will be of great interest to anyone with a chronic medical condition which the doctors seem unable to cure, but also to anyone who is concerned about work/life balance and the long-term effects of ignoring the body’s needs. I can’t say I’m in any either of those categories but I still found it a fascinating read. But the book is not only about pain and a quest for healing, for Tim, being the writer and scholar that he is, digresses frequently into philosophical and literary themes which break up the stark accounts of medical processes.
Tim Parks developed a set of problems in the region of prostate, groin and pelvis which had a devastating effect on his life. The first part of the book describes the medical explorations which he had to undergo in order to seek a diagnosis. Any man reading the book is going to squirm with discomfort as Parks’ recounts the procedures carried out on him, some of which make root canal work sound like a head massage. There are touches of humour, such as his account of the time he had to pee into a small plastic urinal called a “parrot”, while lying on his back (impossible for him – I can sympathise I’m sure), but generally this section is pretty grim.
Continue reading Review: Teach Us To Sit Still – Tim Parks
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