Don Quixote in Thai?

[chuckwoww]

I always defend 'Private Dancer'. Still the best book of it's kind I think. I know it's loaded with stereotypes and cliches but I've actually met some of the people the book is based on and it was a breath of fresh air (if you'll excuse the cliche) when it first appeared. Stephen Leather's background is in journalism and 'Private Dancer' reflects that. It's a fictional vehicle for expressing a lot of thoughts and ideas about Bangkok, Thai/farang relations etc. and I don't think it aspires to being great literature.

[playtheblues]

I guess we will continue to disagree. I have already mentioned some reasons for my criticism but also given some modifying remarks why it COULD have been a good story. You see see this potential realized, I do not.

 

I think Leather's problem as an author is that too many expats here are "Stephen" with him and he tends to see Thailand through their eyes and they infiltrate his perception of Thailand and its people and become some sort of ghost writers.

 

Expats' - and their literary representatives' - difficulties in grasping the essence of Thailand and the Thai people have, as I see it, to a great extent to do with the pervasive influence of Anglo-American Christianity and its puritanism AND, in literature. the still lingering influence of 19th century romanticism. Surface is rejected, it's what is beneath the surface that counts. Instead of accepting the Thai view that surface is the substance and the real meaning of life, they (we) tend to judge Thais from their (our) own Western dualistic view of the world. So Thai superficiality is thus bad and immoral, irresponsible, a form of cheating (which it often is, as we all now).

 

So even though Stephen Leather correctly reveals the fatal mismatch between Pete's Western true-love-beneath-the-surface illusion and Joy's fundamental and very instrumental Thainess in this regard, this Thainess is nonetheless viewed through Western eyes and reduced to cynical bargirl behaviour and she is judged as a bar girl -and nothing more. I don't really breathe that fresh air from his book, CW.

 

Puh all these literary semantics are exhausting me... besides it's unusually hot today, isn't it?

[chuckwoww]

I'm not sure we do disagree. Of course PD is flawed. It isn't intended to be an in-depth psychological study. I think Leather does manage to capture the East/West misunderstanding which for a lot of people IS the 'essence' of being in Thailand. If Stephen Leather was Thai writing for Thais obviously he would have written the book from a different perspective. I just think your critical standards are too high.

 

Don't take this stuff too seriously....I'm basically just trying to clarify my own thoughts.

[playtheblues]

You are right, the issue is not that serious, and it's easy to get carried away be one's own semantics. Anyhow, to connect to where it started: Pete could very well be considered a modern day Western Don Quixote and the story could be a hilarious sequence of episodes which "represent a clash between Don Quixotes illusions and an ordinary reality which contradicts it" (Auerbach). A high point would be Don Quixote's encounter with the three crude peasant women, one of which being Dulcinea (Joy) according to the lying Sancho who had been sent out to find the imaginary lady but must find a way to conceal his lack of success.

 

"But for once Don Quixote sees nothing except the actual reality, that is three peasant women on donkeys...Don Quixote's ability to transform events to harmonize with his illusion breaks down before the crude vulgarity of the sight of the peasant women. All this as we have presented it...sounds sad, bitter and almost tragic. But if we merely read Cervantes' text, we have a farce, and a farce that is overwhelmingly comic" as Auerbach describes the scene (as we know, Don Quixote surmonts this shock by persuading himself that Dulcinea is enchanted).

 

I would like to see a story about the clash between Western illusion about Thailand and Thai crude reality along the lines of Cervantes' masterwork, and without the pathos, cliches and stereotypes which the writers has given us so far. Especially I would dispense with the pathos and welcome the hilarious comics of such a plot.

[chuckwoww]

I would like to see a story about the clash between Western illusion about Thailand and Thai crude reality along the lines of Cervantes' masterwork, and without the pathos, cliches and stereotypes which the writers has given us so far. Especially I would dispense with the pathos and welcome the hilarious comics of such a plot.

 

Better not hold your breath. I don't think books like that get written anymore. Not many people have the necessary attention span.

 

Perhaps 'Bangkok 8' was an attempt to get beyond the stereotypes but I wouldn't call it comic.

 

[Therafalution]

There is a thai translation

 

http://www.nationmultimedia.com/2006/02/23/opinion/opinion_20001395.php

 

http://budparr.typepad.com/400windmills/2006/week8/index.html

 

 

[elef]

Only half of it according to your second link

 

The Thai-language edition , covering the first volume of Don Quixote, is the 85th foreign-language edition of the classic which celebrated its 400th anniversary last year.

 

Professor Swangwan Traicharoenwiwat of Ramkamhaeng University, who translated the story into Thai, said the classic is universally acclaimed for its sense of humour, ideology and ethical values.

 

The original Don Quixote has two volumes, each of which contains more than 600 pages. Swangwan said only the first volume is now available in Thai.

 

[Flashermac]

Swangwan???

 

 

[Old Hippie]

Flash, if you can score me a copy of this, let me know!