Swashbucklers All: 'Don Quixote' and the Catholic Novel

No authentic portrait of the author of Don Quixote exists. Studying this gargantuan figure and his omnivorous relish for life, we are led to wonder what canvas could contain him. He takes us far from the world-weary aesthete among his books and absinthe: “Living? Our servants will do that for us” (Villiers). Cervantes did his own living, and Don Quixote’s translator Tom Lathrop is right: “You might be surprised at how much Cervantes’s swashbuckling life affected this work.” Swashbuckling. The adjective derives from swashbuckler, meaning one who beats his sword against his own or his enemy’s shield. It’s not the first word that comes to mind when discussing the lives of English and American writers. Dr. Johnson? Clubbable, tough-minded, a wonderful talker, but no swashbuckler. William Shakespeare? Never spent a day in jail. What about Geoffrey Chaucer, James Baldwin, or F. Scott Fitzgerald? It just doesn’t fit. There’s too much swagger in it, with a charmless hint of dubious manners, low company, and the halitotic reek of garlic.