Jacquie's Email: Hello Literary Ladies! It's Back-to-School time which means the first day of the 2025-2026 academic calendar year of the Literature Club of Hastings-on-Hudson is about to commence! This year our area of concentration is “High School Reading Re-Visited.”
Laura Rice will hand out our schedules for the upcoming year and all present will be asked to answer the question, “What I did on my summer vacation.” In addition, summer reading will be shared with all. After an oral report on our last session (the link to Frances’ blog is below for those who need to review what we covered last year) and a quick exercise with math, Frances will present on Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes.
Members, please let our hostess know if you will not be in attendance and can provide a valid excuse for your absence, and associates who are auditing, kindly confirm if you will be present.
I had the great good fortune of having excellent high school English teachers who shared their love for literature passionately, keeping me engaged whether it was first period 10th grade honors English with Mr. Audette at 7:40 AM or last period 12th grade AP English with Mrs. Wojtazek at 1:28. I wish I remember more of what they actually said and not just what they wore (Mr. Kennedy’s brown suits, Mrs. Evaul’s polyester power blazers...) but I do remember the feeling of being in their classes, developing a joy for a specific kind of inquiry that would stay with me always.
This should certainly be a banner year for our dear sorority! x Jacquie
Christine's Minutes On the seventeenth of September, 2025, while the world-as-we-knew-it appeared to be crumbling, disintegrating and/or deteriorating all around us, it was with enormous pleasure and a great sense of healthy camaraderie, trust, and the love of great literature, that fourteen members and two associates of the Hastings Literature Club gathered in Joanna’s balmy backyard for our first meeting of the 2025-2026 season, “High School Reading Re-visited.” Unlike our lunch fare back in high school, we dined on refreshing gazpacho and a scrumptious plum tart.
By way of demonstrating that we are not slaves to tradition, Madame President rang the bell at 1:10 PM.
Our treasurer, Lori, reported that we are flush with $488.66. Of that amount, $99.50 will be given to the Friends of the Library for books. Joanna suggested that as our gift this year, we give them $100 for board books.
Fresh from all that leisurely summertime reading, several members had books to recommend:
Endling Maria Reva
The Accompanist Nina Berberova
The Emperor of Gladness Ocean Veong
Autobiography of Red, Anne Carson
Isola Allegra Goodman
The Cara Black Mystery series with investigator Aimée Leduc
Kristin Lavransdatter Sigrit Undset
Your Steps on the Stairs Antonio Muñoz Molina
It Can’t Happen Here Sinclair Lewis
Mansfield Park Jane Austen
Memory Piece Lisa Coe
Linda shared with us the syllabus of her daughter’s AP English class at the Williamstown High School in Massachusetts. The reading list was exceptionally well-chosen and wide-ranging and there was general agreement that we would all have enjoyed, and learned much from, the class.
Vocabulary-wise, we had the dubious pleasure of learning the definition of kakistocracy: government by the least suitable or competent citizens of a state. The word was coined in the 17th century and comes from the Greek words: kákistos and kratos.
To begin our year of filling in the lacunae of our early years’ reading, what better way to start than with Don Quixote, the masterpiece of Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra? Frances began her presentation by pointing out that while one may not have actually read Don Quixote, most everyone feels that they know him, his sidekick Sancho Panza, the valiant steed Rocinante, and their adventures “tilting at windmills.” Many of us could sing the songs from the Broadway musical, The Man of La Mancha. And we all use the eponymous adjective ‘quixotic.’
Frances happily discovered that in 1952, Vladimir Nabokov, while a visiting professor at Harvard, was compelled to teach Don Quixote. His first reaction to the book was quite negative, because of all the violence. Correctly so, as the novel is full of violence and cruel mockery. But over time and multiple readings, Nabokov came to admire the lively dialogue, and his collected lectures are now canonical.
Published in 1605, Don Quixote is considered to the first modern novel, and one of the longest. Though at 430,269 words, it does not approach the voluminous verbiage of Clarissa, with its 950,000 words. (Enough of such quibbling and braggadocio.) The novel was an immediate success. It was translated into English in 1612, and we know that Shakespeare read it.
Cervantes’ life was itself the stuff of adventure novels. He was born in 1547, to a moderately prosperous family. His father was a barber-surgeon, and his mother came from rural landowners. At some point the father gave up barbering and looked for other work. He spent time in debtors’ prison – as Cervantes himself would later do.
Cervantes was living in Madrid when, at 19, he published four poems. But as any poet can tell you, that did not pay the bills. Thus, he worked as a household manager for a Roman cardinal, enlisted in the Spanish Army, and in 1571 fought in the Battle of Lepanto, where he was wounded, and ultimately lost the use of his left hand. While sailing back home to Madrid, his ship was captured by Barbary pirates, and he was sold into slavery in Algiers. After five years in captivity, he was ransomed. Back in Spain, Cervantes continued to write and held various government positions. However, financial ‘irregularities’ landed him in debtors’ prison for a year. He wrote that it was during that year that he conceived of the idea of Don Quixote. (Recalling Dickens’ Micawber, I am wondering if there were a few delusional characters in that prison to provide inspiration.) He was 58 when he published Don Quixote. And 68 when he published the second part.
On the enduring fame and relevance of Don Quixote, Frances’ pointed to Quixote’s desire to ‘do good.’ Living in a time of a morally and ethically corrupt government as we do, readers find his idealism is a beacon. It may be that our own idealism could be described as quixotic.
What exactly was the nature of Don Quixote’s madness? With the pure intentions of a (fictive) knight errant, he manages to cause a lot of grief and trouble for others. Having read the romances of knight errantry, Quixote polishes his great grandfather’s suit of armor, saddles up Rocinante and departs pleasant La Mancha in search of occasions to do good. Along the way he hires Sancho Panza, as he realizes that all knights errant need a loyal squire.
Like his squire, Don Quixote, Sancho Pancho is a comic creation of genius. Faithful, realistic, and unencumbered by fantasies of knight errantry, he remains loyal to the end. He can see clearly that the helmet of Mambrino is in fact a barber’s basin, and that the fierce giants are windmills, but Quixote is immune to such naysaying.
Quixote also decides that, as a knight, he must be devoted to a noble and pure woman, and he fixates on Dulcinea. She is a woman from his village whom he does not know, and so finds it possible to imagine her very imaginary beauty and virtue.
For readers, it is a sad comeuppance when, after many bungled adventures, Quixote goes home, and there his niece and housekeeper, along with the village priest and barber, pull all the culpable volumes of knightly adventure from his library, and burn them. Then they completely wall off his library, so that upon waking, Quixote is shocked to find that his library has disappeared.
Members read aloud from Guy Davenport’s introduction to Nabokov’s Lectures on Don Quixote, from Nabokov’s lecture, and from the novel itself: classic scenes of the windmills, of Mambrino’s helmet, of the blanket-tossing and more. The combination of humor and pathos was powerful. Frances chose to use the much-praised 2003 Edith Grossman translation, which we all appreciated.
It was an afternoon to remember, especially when we need an antidote to our so-called reality.
Respectfully submitted,
Christine Lehner, substituting for Frances Greenberg
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