There’s a line in this that absolutely kills me. Gets me every time. Perfectly pitched.
Well, they’re lotsa funnies, but this one takes the galleta.
It ain’t much good in isolation, so let’s get the giggle glands going with some also-rans.
But first a run-up. For those of you who think you’ve got better things to do than loll around reading an 800-pager written four hundred years ago, I say, oh yeah, what’s that?
If you aren’t going to tell me and you’re still not going to read it, here it is in a sentence.
Old dotty duffer decides to turn knight errant (a medieval knight wandering in search of chivalrous deeds).
…redressing all manner of wrongs and exposing himself to chances and dangers, by the overcoming of which he might win eternal honour and renown.
To do this he needs a horse, a henchman and a helmet.
A bit of scrabbling and compromise and he has Rocinante, a be-donkeyed serf Sancho Panza and, eventually, something to put on his head.
Once these preparations were completed, he was anxious to wait no longer before putting his ideas into effect, impelled to do this by the thought the loss the world suffered by his delay, seeing the grievances there were to redress, the wrongs to right, the injuries to amend, the abuses to correct and the debts to discharge.
What a classic set-up. The higher the highfalutin aspirations, the harder the fall down to earth with a bump.
From this height there’s nowhere to go but frustration, humiliation, embarrassment and ignominy.
And his first deed? To rescue a local farm wench he decides is a princess. Seriously, listen up. This stuff populates funny farms.
“…she is my queen and mistress; her beauty superhuman, for in her are are realised all the impossible and chimerical attributes of beauty which poets give to ladies; that her hair is gold; her forehead the Elysian fields; her eyebrows rainbows; her eyes suns; her cheeks roses; her lips coral; her teeth pearls; her neck alabaster; her breast marble; her hands ivory; she is white as snow; and those parts which modesty has veiled from human sight as such, I think and believe, that discreet reflection can extol them, but make no comparison.”
Lovely. Earth calling Don Quixote, will you come in, please.
Spanish readers all those centuries ago must’ve collapsed against walls clutching their sides, aching with laughter. They needed it. It was only a few decades after the Spanish Inquisition’s immolation, immurement and comfy chairs.
What do you mean get a move on? Okay, okay, five quick-fire ones.
“It is indeed clear to me that your visits to the wineskin require payment in sleep rather than music.”
“I say nothing about another blanket tossing, for such misfortunes are difficult to prevent, and if they come there’s nothing for it but to hunch your shoulders, hold your breath, close your eyes and let yourself go where fate and the blanket send you.”
“…either your worship is joking, or the gentleman must have rooms in his brain vacant.”
“Pray God, Sancho, I may see you dumb before I die.”
Ready? Nappy on?
Sancho says, on being bade to pick up Quixote’s famous head-piece…
“It’s like nothing so much as a barber’s basin.”
Bump.
What a line. I always think of it when face-to-face with pride and pomposity, with or without a looking-glass.
Good book.
Also handy on hills if your handbrake isn’t working.
Thanks for being here.
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