Image generated by AI

Ryan and Don Roger

7

Hunt the Author

            We have already seen what type of games can be played with numbers. Now we shall look at a different type of party game – hunt the thimble or the slipper turned into hunt the author. Where is the best place to hide a tree? In a forest. What is the best place in which to hide a book? In a library. What is the best place to hide a needle? In a haystack. What is the best place to hide an author? In a book, of course.

How does this affect our understanding of Don Quixote? Well, we are about to find out. But first we must ask the question, why would we want to hide an author in the first place? The answer to this is quite simple – to avoid punishment from the Spanish Inquisition, or any other authoritarian institution that wishes to ban books and punish authors for writing them. The best way to do this is to not put the author’s name on the book. Thus, Lazarillo de Tormes, said to be the first picaresque novel, was written by Anonymous. And when you check your history of literature, you will find that a great many books and poems have been written by that gentle person. Person, because being anonymous, we have no idea if he was a he or she was a she!

But who is the author of Don Quixote? Miguel de Cervantes, obviously. Who, then, is the narrator of the story? In the first sentence of the book, this first-person narrator reveals himself ‘in a village in la Mancha that I do not wish to name – de cuyo nombre no quiero acordarme / whose name I don’t want to remember – in the original Spanish. A little later, DQI, II / 2, in an effort to distance himself from the text, our first-person narrator states that ‘There are authors who say that the first adventure he met was that of the pass of Lapice. Others say it was the windmills. But what I have been able to discover of the matter and what I have found written in the annals of La Mancha …”

So, we have our first-person narrator, but he is not creating this story, not at all. We know from 4 – Stage to Page, that our narrator borrowed the idea for this first sortie from El Entremés de los Romances. Now he tells us that multiple authors have written about Don Quixote and his adventures and that there are some discrepancies about what was his first adventure. Our narrator also tells us that he has researched the matter and found his account in the annals of La Mancha. Interesting. Annals, multiple writers, and our narrator is a historian who has researched the matter. What do we find when we hunt the author? Not one author, but multiple authors and a reference to accounts of the matter contained in the annals of La Mancha. Once again, AI comes to my rescue – “Synonyms for annals include historical records, chronicles, archives, journals, and registers. These terms refer to chronological accounts or records of events, often in yearly order, documenting the history of a person, organization, or era.”

            Curiouser and curiouser! Historical records – chronicles – archives – journals – registers -documenting the history of a person – what price creativity? No single slipper, then, at this hunt the slipper party, but a multiplicity of slippers, just like the Easter Bunny lays a multiplicity of eggs at Easter and hides them round the house. So much for the needle in the haystack – some haystack this.