Don Quixote

[jbor]

>> One wonders what you make of Pynchon's Gershom and his loyalty and affection
>> towards George Washington in _M&D_!

GQ
> One must wonder no longer! It does not bother me at all. Of course, this
> relationship is written in a deliberately comic/ironic fashion.
> 
> Surely, there are too many self-evident differences between M&D and DQ to
> really compare them in this respect....?

The comment was only half serious and made only because your example
immediately conjured up GW in M&D. The main disagreement here is about
liking or not liking DQ, which isn't going to be a fatal one I hope, but
even so I do happen to think there are many similarities between M&D and DQ
(Wicks' tediousness and pomposity, the nested narratives, the dual
protagonists and their relationship, the comic/ironic sensibility, the
captive's tale in particular). And, while the relationship between Gershom
and his master in M&D is indeed comic/ironic it's still a take on GW as
liberal slaveowner which causes conniptions in some readers, as we saw in
the group read. But I do see what you're saying with Ricote's speech where
he distances himself from his non-Christian fellow Moors, and agree that it
is a different case, though I'd add that it is only a couple of sentences in
a thousand page novel.

best