Day 11 (November 28) Part I, Chapter X, Parts 2-3

“Those Guardia were Guardia, not windmills. I am Father Quixote, and not Don Quixote. I tell you, I exist. My adventures are my own adventures, not his. I go my way—–my way—not his. I have free will.”

Very fortissimo: Give Father Quixote more wine. Many characters can talk these lines, but it seems to me only Father Quixote, like his predecessor, can reach for some truth, even by cliches.

“I know that Marx and Lenin existed. You only believe.”

Oh Sancho! This reminds me of one of my favorite exchanges between my husband and two evangelists at our door. After a long, one-way conversation from the visitors, my husband said reasonably, “We’re trained as scientists so we can never say, we know the truth.” To which the evangelists replied reasonably: “Precisely, sir. That’s the difference between you and us. You can’t say you know the truth, but we know the truth.”

“There is always a fallacy to be found in a logical argument.”

“Logical thought does often lead to absurd situations.”

Some of the best absurdities come from logic—it seems so to me, at least. This is why I don’t feel convinced by the effects of absurdities in fiction unless there is logic to be discerned in the first place. (I’m looking at some of the new novels I read this year for the Booker Prize judging. Pray, I want to say to them, where is your logic?)