Monsignor Quixote by Graham Greene: Day 10

Part I, Chapter IX–X, Part 1 (p. 101–118)

“Laughter is not an argument.”

“A solitary laugh is so often a laugh of superiority.”

These two lines have stayed with me since my first reading of the novel nearly 20 years ago. Many characters can make a reader laugh mindlessly, but one always longs for a thoughtful laugh. Sometimes, I wish for a long conversation about laughter with Father Quixote.

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“O God, make me human, let me feel temptation. Save me from my indifference.”

“If a bullet had struck him…they would have taken his body back to El Toboso and there he would have been at home again and not on this absurd pilgrimage—to what? Or Where?”

One feels the despair seeping into the text with all the question marks: Father Quixote is too much of a philosopher, and a philosopher cannot be a blindly faithful man.

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“He sat down again and let the man fit the other shoe over the protruding toe which he adjusted with gentleness and even a touch of reverence, pushing it back into the sock.”

This is when the teacher in me wants to show the line to the writing students and say, this is how you write about a physical touch: Not a pat, not a hug, not clasped hands or intertwined fingers or lips brushed against cheeks, but a gentle pushing of a helpless toe.

Join us on December 3 for a virtual discussion of Monsignor Quixote with Yiyun Li.