Orchid Diary

August 20th, 2005 Treats

Keeping a blog is much like growing orchids. Every once a week, one needs to chase out the spiders, queen ants and other pests that decides to nest there.

Some time ago the vanda has been moved downstairs into the estate’s public space. It is enjoying the sun and rain and has sprouted buds. It looks like three but only one is growing strongly. Finally – after two years of roots and more roots.

Don Quixote

August 19th, 2005 books

On holiday in Redang (gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous!) I got myself a room with a shower and no teevee and for the entire length of the trip immersed myself with Don Quixote or the marine creatures in the water. The edition I bought is edited by Harold Bloom, translated by Edith Grossman. This particular edition has nice frayed edges every ten pages or so, giving the book the look of ancient books where they were bound together with hand made paper. Lovely packaging but does not do well near water for the pages are smooth and thin.

It is more pleasurable to come across great books not knowing they are great first, then on concluding the opinion find others who share similar opinions of the book. The trouble I have with this book initially is its fame: I am easily intimidated by great books because of their length and complexity. That an ex-colleague of mine called it a great book naturally prevented me from picking this up out of natural curiosity – which I would eventually after discovering nothing interesting to read after some time.

My initial discomfort is overcomed once I began. This is the comic novel to beat all other comic novels. Quixote is not insane yet he must be to lose all reason to books of chivarly. Every new chapter astonishes the reader. Every turn of the page is a fresh chortle. I came to the novel in parts, putting the book away in between mealtimes and swimming so I do not have in my mind a whole book but a book of episodes or adventures.

Comedy is mostly derived from another person’s tragedy. Most often mentioned is the windmill story where Quixote percieves 40 windmills to be enemy giants and charges straight at them but falls and hurts himself badly. Most of his adventures have this formula. Quixote would decided that he must do good and with every meeting of new characters he pigeonholes them into good or evil. Then appropriately, he intervenes. The ending is either the person he ’saves’ implores him never to save him again, or that Quixote gets a good battering. Either way, it’s hilarious. The highest comedy is where a person, knowing that Quixote has more than a few loose screws, plots to decieve him to keep himself our of trouble (as Sancho did) or out of entertainment. For instance Sancho insisting that Dulcinea del Toboso whom his master had pledge love yet never before met is a peasant girl. (Later it turned out that was Dulcinea!) The duke and duchess of the land having heard his craziness, plot to decieve Quixote and Sancho through a series of adventures. In short I found the comedy in book two far funnier than book one. Also, the mention of numerous historians and fake historical accounts created a confusion of fact and fiction. First there is Cervantes. Then there is a fake historical sequel to book one written by Alonso Fern