Sarah Weinman's guest blogger Olen Steinhauer posted about translations this morning, and Sarah commented, mentioning one of my favorite books, Cervantes's DON QUIXOTE. We all know the anecdote of Quixote tilting at windmills, seeing dragons, and perhaps we've all seen the dental commercial replacing Quixote's lance with a toothbrush, but I find the genuine story all the more rich.
It helped that by the time I read it in a college class called "DON QUIXOTE and the Modern Novel," I had heard the original Broadway cast recording of Man of La Mancha, and had seen an episode of Quantum Leap in which Sam Becket leaps into an actor understudying to play Alonso Quijana. All that said, for my final two undergrad years at Hofstra (with no chemical assistance), I, like Quijana, decided to see the world and people around me not as they were, but as they might be--full of potential.
In the years following, like Quijana at the end of Cervantes's book, I've hung up the sword and armor, but every now and then:
Oh, the trumpets of glory now call me to ride...
2 comments:
For my money, Brian Stokes Mitchell's MAN OF LA MANCHA is a great revival. Look for the cd, it's the 2003 revival, you'll love how he interprets the role, and he's got the most amazing voice.
that was Christine, by the way. Sorry, I'm not used to this anonymous commenting.
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