Monsignor Quixote by Graham Greene: Day 9
Part I, Chapter VIII (p. 88-100)
Father Quixote’s reading of Marx reminds me of my first reading of the Bible. I was a teenager, and a friend of my sister’s got hold of a copy (not legal reading in 1988 in Beijing) of the Holy Bible (in Chinese translation) and gave it to me. My reading of the book was an experience close to Father Quixote’s reading of the The Communist Manifesto: We might have got everything wrong, but the feelings we got out of our readings could not be wrong.
“A first reading is something special, like first love. I wish I could come on Saint Paul now by accident and read him for the first time.”
As a rereader, I always wonder what book(s) would fall into this category for myself. I can’t quite think of any at this moment. Perhaps some people don’t have first love, only, love that stands rereading and revisiting.
Father Quixote’s tonic water and the undertaker’s confession in the lavatory: I often think this is the most un-Greene-like writing, but perhaps he only needs a copy of Don Quixote next to his typewriter to write something with such pure joy.
Join us on December 3 for a virtual discussion of Monsignor Quixote with Yiyun Li.
 |
|
MQ says Marx got it wrong when he said “The modern labourer , instead of rising with the progress of industry, sinks deeper and deeper below the conditions of existence of his own class. He becomes a pauper”. I think that 80 million Americans would say Marx got it right. They would be horrified to think that a Marxist is on their side.
We’re always hoping for a formula that will provide us with the right thoughts and words and deeds for every situation. And so we have our holy books and philosophy and constitutions and decrees. Father Quixote reads Marx and tastes tonic water for the first time and hears confession in the lavatory and discovers the old formula has failed him.