Monsignor Quixote by Graham Greene: Day 14
Part II, Chapter III (p. 160–176)
“Ours is an honest wine. But yours is more than honest—it is beautiful.”
Earlier on, there was important wine, common wine, agreeable wine, young wine. And now we come to honest wine and beautiful wine. I don’t suppose I have tasted honest wine or stubborn wine or elusive wine—I would like to have a taste of those more than a beautiful wine.
“He had shut his face, as a man shuts a book which he finds that he doesn’t wish to read.”
This is a curious description. I keep going back and forth, wondering if it makes sense or nonsense. And yet it has stayed with me: An expressionless face and an unread book both bring some sadness to this reader.
Poor Father Quixote, tilting the windmill of corruption in the church: We must toast to his intention.
Join us on December 3 for a virtual discussion of Monsignor Quixote with Yiyun Li.
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I enjoyed one (perhaps) final battle between MQ and the forces of hypocrisy. It is becoming impossible for him to make the small compromises most people endure to simply get along.
I re-read that sentence several times too. The first time I read it, I thought it meant that Señor Diego didn't want the others to see his sorrow. Now I am wondering if the analogy for his face having 'lost all expression' evokes how he himself doesn't want to dwell any further on the prospect of having no descendants to care for the vineyard; that _that's_ the book he doesn't wish to read anymore.