Slugs and Basilisks

Reading a classic novel and three children's books. I finish two collections of newspaper comics. A friend makes me generate a new poll for him to vote in.

O Savage Basilisk

Don Quixote snapped fully into place for me when D.Q. and Sancho hear the tale of Grisóstomo, the eccentric young man who died for his love of the impossibly beautiful and defiantly chaste village girl Marcela who turned her back on her family’s riches and all of her manly suitors in exchange for a life as a wandering shepherdess. They have heard about this from some friendly shepherds and also run into some traveling gentlemen on their way to Grisóstomo’s funereal rites, so Marcela has become something of a legend before our boys even lay eyes upon her.

When they do she seizes the reins of the story with an unheralded narrative vengeance that dazzles her audience and knocked this reader flat. I would guess that Cervantes was in an authorial flow-state and was probably fairly disarmed by it himself when he came up with it. This “savage basilisk of these mountains,” as the gentleman Ambrosio addresses her, launches into an incredible two-page diatribe about how she “cannot grasp why, simply because it is loved, the thing loved for its beauty is obliged to love the one who loves it” and how “if all beauties loved and surrendered, there would be a whirl of confused and misled wills not knowing where they should stop, for since beautiful subjects are infinite, desires would have to be infinite, too.” During the course of this enrapturing passage Marcela further remarks that “just as the viper does not deserve to be blamed for its venom, although it kills, since it was given the venom by nature, I do not deserve to be reproved for being beautiful, for beauty in the chaste woman is like a distant fire or sharp-edged sword: they do not burn or cut the person who does not approach them.”

Insights as true, profound and funny as the preceding tumble out of this monologue one after another until Marcela concludes that the “limits of my desires are these mountains, and if they go beyond here, it is to contemplate the beauty of heaven and the steps whereby the soul travels to its first home.”

Then she leaves, not waiting for anyone to reply, knowing that there is nothing worthwhile for any of these men to say in riposte. Don Quixote instantly recognizes her as a person worthy of his offering “to serve her in any way he could” but so far in my reading he hasn’t been able to catch up with her. I know how he feels; if Cervantes were asking for my opinion I might suggest that he write his next novel all about Marcela and call it Savage Basilisk. She strikes me as a coequal to D.Q. who is positioned about ninety moral degrees away from him: his life’s purpose, bravery, and sense of place in the world are real but are premised on delusional falsehoods, while hers are aligned with purity, discipline and a truthfulness that can only be called “savage” in its acuity.

I also read three bilingual children’s board books: Loteria: more first words/más primeras palabras by Patty Rodriguez and Ariana Stein with art by Citlali Reyes and Mis Amigos/My Friends and Buenas Noches/Good Night, both by uncredited authors and illustrators. At this rate I’ll surely be ready any moment to re-read Don Quixote in the original Spanish.

Slugging It Out

In the comics corner, FoxTrot: en masse by Bill Amend and my second reading of Binky’s Guide to Love by Matt Groening have both taken their places on the complete reading list. The FoxTrot collection concludes with a six-page issue of Jason Fox’s homemade comic book “The Adventures of Slug-Man,” presented in an in-universe style, as if the reader were Jason’s put-upon mother Andy and had just had her ten-year-old son’s crude pen-and-marker comic book shoved solicitously into her hands. Since the Slug-Man piece is essentially a pretty bland, harmless and unenthusing chunk of cartooning, the reader’s reaction of not knowing what to say that is honest without being needlessly rude is a good simulation of what Andy would be feeling in this scenario. Good for Amend for giving his readers a little extra comics bang for their book-buying buck, but the several hundred pages of newspaper strips that precede the Slug-Man caboose are much more fun.

Polling Place

My closest buddy back in New Jersey was like Hey I’m a One Could Argue registered voter and I’m entitled to subject you to some shitty viewing. Please generate a movie poll and make all of the options bad instead of just some of them.

The results of this poll will be BINDING and I will be duty-bound to watch the winning selection for my next entry.

• They Saved Hitler’s Brain, directed by David Bradley, 1968. I offered this one in the first Polling Place but it lost out to To Have and Have Not.

• Four Quartets, directed by Sophie Fiennes, 2023. I love Ralph Fiennes’s work as much as the next fellow and also I really don’t want to sit through him reciting almost ninety minutes’ worth of T.S. Eliot poetry from memory. I’m glad he is able to do it; I just would prefer not to be involved.

• The Slumber Party Massacre, directed by Amy Holden Jones, 1982. Some slasher B-movie I never heard of, so strictly speaking I don’t know how bad it actually is. Certainly not the kind of thing I spend much time watching. I’m prepared to simply be very bored by this.

• Knight of Cups, directed by Terrence Malick, 2015. I heartily dig the great films from the earlier part of Malick’s oeuvre but I trailed off after the misguided The Tree of Life and the embarrassing To the Wonder. Those two are followed on his filmography by this Knight of Cups which I recently tried to watch and found the first fifteen minutes of to be basically insufferable.