Don Quixote Cervantes by Walter StarkieMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
This was a slog for me to get through. I certainly don't enjoy the book like I do the musical Man of La Mancha. Well, I don't always subscribe to the "the book is better" automatic reaction.
In a book of this size, there should always be gems, and there are:
… said Sancho. "…madness has always more followers and hangers-on than wisdom…”
...and Don Quixote's list of wise advice to Sancho on attaining his inland island governorship, etc.
But, the length of this collection of episodic shaggy dog stories almost made me give up, until I found support in skipping over some parts (even of this abridged version) in the note to The Adventures of Don Quixote by translator John Michael Cohen.
What I didn't skip was any of the helpful footnotes here, explaining Spanish sayings, contemporary history, relevance to the life of Cervantes, and connections to the period literature on adventurous knights such as AmadÃs de Gaula >
I was also interested to learn that this work and Sancho's observations is apparently the source of the "The Haves and the Have Nots" in the expression (variously translated) used by Sancho Panza in Part II, Ch. 20. Perhaps it is his direct, peasant application of Matthew 13:12:
For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath.
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