You finished Remedia.
Terrific novel—characters, places, drama, linguistic acrobatics, mystery. But I would’ve read it just to get to that great ending.
Very elegiac. The whole book resonates in it. Made me think of those last minutes of Mahler’s Ninth.
I need to talk about this book
Sure. We can start with Joyce’s subtitle, a picaresque, a rogue on the road adventure story, though his narrator isn’t really a rogue. There are lots of picaresques, but you have to think about Don Quixote.
OK, plenty of adventures alright, like Cervantes—in New York, Ireland, France, San Francisco, Iowa, the Utah desert. But our guy’s not on horseback.
No. His Rosinante takes various forms—ship, air, auto, and maybe the most memorable a brew of psychedelics that transports him halfway across the continent to an Amish colony in Iowa.
Wild. What about a sidekick like Quixote’s Sancho Panza?
The Goshute Indian Tokoa, though he doesn’t meet him at first. A very engaging vulgarian, worldly wise like Sancho but also given to mystery.
What about Quixote’s dreamboat, Dulcinea?
Ha! That’s a very funny question because our narrator’s Dulcinea is an earthy, foul-mouthed often lascivious Irish woman named Medb, Gaelic for intoxicating, here especially sexually intoxicating. Unlike Dulcinea, Medb is very real, even when she joins the desert sisterhood, which we’ll need to talk a lot about later. Meanwhile, our narrator had another lover, Laterna Magika, who’ll be very important when we talk about mission.
OK. But what about Quixote’s renunciation and return to sanity just before he dies? I don’t see that here exactly. But then I don’t have a complete grasp of the novel.
I’m not sure you’re supposed to. Not because there are loose ends narratively. Most of that gets tied up by the end. It’s because our narrator doesn’t venture forth to rid the world of miscreants, giants, witches, etc., like the Don. His is a very different, even more difficult mission. And he meets extraordinary people and witnesses extraordinary events that complicate his mission.
What is the mission exactly?
That’s the last big thing we’ll talk about. But next week the desert sisterhood. OK?
I’m in.
Terrific novel—characters, places, drama, linguistic acrobatics, mystery. But I would’ve read it just to get to that great ending.
Very elegiac. The whole book resonates in it. Made me think of those last minutes of Mahler’s Ninth.
I need to talk about this book
Sure. We can start with Joyce’s subtitle, a picaresque, a rogue on the road adventure story, though his narrator isn’t really a rogue. There are lots of picaresques, but you have to think about Don Quixote.
OK, plenty of adventures alright, like Cervantes—in New York, Ireland, France, San Francisco, Iowa, the Utah desert. But our guy’s not on horseback.
No. His Rosinante takes various forms—ship, air, auto, and maybe the most memorable a brew of psychedelics that transports him halfway across the continent to an Amish colony in Iowa.
Wild. What about a sidekick like Quixote’s Sancho Panza?
The Goshute Indian Tokoa, though he doesn’t meet him at first. A very engaging vulgarian, worldly wise like Sancho but also given to mystery.
What about Quixote’s dreamboat, Dulcinea?
Ha! That’s a very funny question because our narrator’s Dulcinea is an earthy, foul-mouthed often lascivious Irish woman named Medb, Gaelic for intoxicating, here especially sexually intoxicating. Unlike Dulcinea, Medb is very real, even when she joins the desert sisterhood, which we’ll need to talk a lot about later. Meanwhile, our narrator had another lover, Laterna Magika, who’ll be very important when we talk about mission.
OK. But what about Quixote’s renunciation and return to sanity just before he dies? I don’t see that here exactly. But then I don’t have a complete grasp of the novel.
I’m not sure you’re supposed to. Not because there are loose ends narratively. Most of that gets tied up by the end. It’s because our narrator doesn’t venture forth to rid the world of miscreants, giants, witches, etc., like the Don. His is a very different, even more difficult mission. And he meets extraordinary people and witnesses extraordinary events that complicate his mission.
What is the mission exactly?
That’s the last big thing we’ll talk about. But next week the desert sisterhood. OK?
I’m in.
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