NP: Don Quixote

[jbor]

>> The digressions and tediousness are a deliberate part of the point of
>> course,

GQ
> With due respect, I can't imagine that Cervantes would agree that his book
> is deliberately *tedious.*

I think Don Quixote, the character, is tedious when he speaks and tells his
versions of stories, and that Cervantes has deliberately made him so. It's
an element of the characterisation. I don't find the narrative digressions
tedious, which seems now to be your complaint.

As to "the book's racism, sexism and classism", for one, it's of its time
and historico-cultural context and I don't see any logic or point in judging
it against current cultural values and mores, and secondly, it actually
satirises many of those prejudices which were prevailing within the society
at the time (eg. the long episode where Sancho is finally made governor of
his own "island", for example). No disrespect intended, but the notion that
the book has a "medieval mindset" seems to me to entirely miss the point
that it is both a parody, of many of those earlier courtly romances it
references, and a satire, not only of DQ himself, but also of the society he
journeys through as well as those he hears about.

best