Word: monsignors
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FICTION: Mantissa, John Fowles -A Midnight Clear, William Wharton Monsignor Quixote, Graham Greene My Old Sweetheart, Susanna Moore Selected Stories, Robert Walser The Third World War, General Sir John Hackett
Scriptwriter, Mario Vargas Llosa Famous Last Words, Timothy Findley ∙ Mantissa, John Fowles Monsignor Quixote, Graham Greene Selected Stories, Robert Walser The Third World War, General Sir John Hackett
...Monsignor Quixote, Greene's 22nd novel, is his most surprising, an intoxicating mix of all the previous themes, antic, religious and somber. His heroes have tumbled, almost unchanged, from Cervantes' 17th century classic. A Vatican prelate, whose Mercedes is miraculously "repaired" by Padre Quixote (who simply fills the empty gas tank) grants a boon: "There are more sinners among the bourgeois than among peasants ... go forth like your ancestor Don Quixote on the highroads of the world...
...ailing little Seat (a Spanish Fiat) dubbed Rocinante, the newly elevated monsignor and his Communist companion Sancho set out for Madrid, a city that neither has seen for many years. Like Spain itself since the death of the Generalissimo, these innocents hurtle into the 20th century with ingenuous vigor. Feasting on suckling pig in Madrid's toniest restaurant or visiting the Valley of the Fallen, Spain's grandiose monument to its Civil War dead, the compañeros loudly dispute the merits of their beliefs: the Gulag vs. the Inquisition; Stalin vs. Judas; Brezhnev vs. Franco. The priest...
Unlike his ancestor, the monsignor does not tilt at windmills, but joyrides on them, producing some superlative nonsense. In the university town of Salamanca, where Sancho once studied with the philosopher Unamuno, they wander into a Spanish house of prostitution. The unsuspecting Quixote comments, "What a large staff of charming young women for so small a hotel." Ignorant of films, for example, he picks a pious-sounding title for his first viewing. X-rated grunts of A Maiden's Prayer, however, make him wonder: "They seemed to suffer such a lot. From the sounds they made." His more worldly...