Chekhov's Mistress
Don Quixote at 400: Open Source Radio
Chris Lydon of Open Source Radio is going to discuss “Don Quixote at 400” on Thursday (Dec-15, 7pm to 8pm Eastern time).
From their blog entry introducing the topic:
“Whether it is the greatest of literary masterpieces or the most mis-categorized and over-sold, Don Quixote (on its 400th birthday) is my prime example of the open-source novel. The tale — itself a patchwork of picaresque and pastoral narratives — has been infinitely cannibalized and copied, retold in the forms of painting (Picasso) and film, the symphonic score (Richard Strauss) and the Broadway musical, not to mention many million cartoons of knight and squire.”
One of the great things about Open Source Radio is their embrace of blogs and YOU are invited to participate in the discussion. So go over to the site, you Quixote-ites, and drop a comment, suggest some topics to talk about and of course, listen in.
I believe that James Iffland of Boston University will be a guest on the show, as well as, uh, me.
You can hear Open Source Radio through through Podcast or on these stations:
KCPW, Salt Lake City 88.3 FM at 7:00 pm [stream]
KQED, San Francisco 88.5 FM, Sacramento 89.3 FM at 1:00 am [stream]
KUOW, Seattle 94.9 at 9:00 pm[stream]
North Country Public Radio, NY and VT, [coverage and frequencies] Wednesdays at 2:00 pm [stream]
Vermont Public Radio, VT [coverage and frequencies] Wednesdays at 7:00 pm [stream]
WGBH, Boston 89.7 FM at 7:00 pm [stream]
WCAI/WNAN, Woods Hole, MA 90.1/91.1 FM at 7:00 pm [stream]
WUML, Lowell, MA 91.5 FM at 9:00 am (rebroadcast from previous night) [stream]
comments
Break a leg, Bud!
– Dave (12/14 at 08:29 PM)
“as well as, um, me”? This from a literary man of letters like you? Embrace your growing fame and stature - Have fun on the radio tonight!
– Mitchell Teplitsky (12/15 at 04:32 PM)
I heard the show on Don Quijote.
The show was on the whole good, though as a veteran reader of the Quijote I didnât, alas, hear anything that I didnât already know.
My big surprise was the mediocre performance by Diana de Armas Wilson. I had read a number of her article which showed original insight into the text. On the show her comments were mediocre at best and didnât rise above the level of a junior college introductory course.
Professor James Iffland, whose work I am not familiar, was much better.
I was especially taken aback by the shallow historical comment thrown out by Professor de Armas Wilson. Her attempt to politicize the literary discussion was unfortunate.
No one made one of the most important historical data for understanding the Don. As an Hidalgo he belongs to the minor aristocracy. This means that his status is higher than his economic means for supporting it. Hidalgos were not allowed to earn a living either by manual or mental labor in order to support themselves. They could only live off their lands.
Any minor aristocrat who broke the rules would lose his honor and his status as an hidalgo. Cervantes had in his exemplary novels (stories) dealt with this and many other themes that he introduces in the Quijote.
The Donâs socio-economic status is not an unimportant datum. IN his first excursion he doesnât even take money with him and is lectured by a hard headed realist inn keeper about the facts of economic life.
The discussion on the radio touched on many issues but didnât work out any of them. There should have been a way to combine some central themes and than settling a root theme which incorporate many of the other themes and motifs.
I would have chosen the uses of the imagination which would place the Membrinoâs basin helmet since in many ways its central to the poetics of the novel.
It isnât true that the object was a basin which a psychotic Don Quijote mistakes for a hamlet.
Thatâs too easy and would turn the novel into a conventional story about illusion. Too Cervantes the helmet, he coins a new term âbaciyelmo,â to characterize the object. Object for Quijote and perhaps Cervantes do not have either intrinsic meanings or functions: their meanings and functions depend on the perspective of the viewer. (The Spanish phenomenologist Ortega Y Gasset wrote insightfully on this issue.)
The point is that this view is at the heart of the Cervantine poetics in this novel.
Still the radio program did bring up some other important issues and I enjoyed listening to Bud Parr.
– JDyer (12/17 at 01:17 AM)
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About this Post
- Posted by: Bud Parr
- Date: December 13, 2005
- Filed Under:
Song of Myself: Diary
- Comments:3
- Links to this Post: Technorati
