A review by dllh
Quichotte by Salman Rushdie

3.0

Sometimes I wish it was easier to read books without knowing who the authors are. If I had read this one without knowing Rushdie had written it, I think I would have figured it was sort of amateurish -- a neat idea with some fun enough writing, but on the whole not a particularly accomplished work. Great authors write duds, but the thing about it is that I lack the confidence in my own smarts to know whether the book is sort of so-so or whether maybe I'm just too dumb to appreciate it. If I didn't know it was written by someone who I know is well respected, maybe I'd approach it more confidently. Much of the book felt to me like sort of a minimalist version of what Barth and Pynchon and heck, probably even Cervantes, often take to (sometimes annoying) extremes. Maybe it's just Rushdie's shtick (I've read only one or maybe two others of his), or maybe he's doing some sort of takedown of that style. To me it felt a little phoned-in, the gags not really earned by the work they appear in. I liked it ok, but it wasn't a real winner to me.