Book Review: Tilting at Windmills

Julian Branston’s Tilting at Windmills (Shaye Areheart Books, 2005) is exactly what it sounds like: an inventive homage to one of the pillars of Western literature, Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote.

While Branston’s book can’t be classed among the gold standard of first novels as epitomized by Gone With the Wind, To Kill a Mockingbird, and A Confederacy of Dunces, it is nevertheless a diverting and beautifully-written success.

The book jacket says nothing about Branston other than that he divides his time between London and California, but that implied symmetry between a city and a state is interesting in its own right, don't you think? At any rate, Branston’s prose reveals a British education and an American sense of fun.

Tilting at Windmills rests on the premise that the henpecked Cervantes becomes a character in a story about the making of his own masterpiece.

The catalyst for this development is the discovery that the errant knight described in Don Quixote actually exists.

Branston has great fun with the political implications of poetry in seventeenth-century Spain, and the story takes on shades of Amadeus when he makes a Cervantian rival the villain of the plot.

I looked in vain for the “foul-mouthed Iberian babes” singled out by a reviewer from Britain’s Guardian newspaper, and must report that while a pair of beautiful Spanish women do have prominent roles in the story (as the widowed patroness of a literary salon and the wife of Cervantes’ friend and printer Robles, respectively), neither of them is particularly foul-mouthed.

Don Quixote come to life has all of the serenity and comic detachment you’d expect (think Peter Sellers in Being There, then fire up the wayback machine), but my favorite character is Branston’s update of Sancho “sidekick” Panza, a merchant named Pedro.

Pedro rings true both then and now. He’s loyal as a dog to his friends, always looking to make a buck (or peso, as the case may be), and prone to generalities about the import/export business if you insist on knowing what he does for a living.

Here’s a taste of Branston’s style, from when the deluded old man who is soon to be “knighted” surprises Pedro and a poacher in a clearing where they had been drinking after dark:

“Hello there,” cried the old man ambling into the clearing on the mare, who seemed to be smiling. The reactions of Pedro and the poacher to the sudden appearance of the old man were characteristic. Pedro buried his head in his hands and mourned. The poacher, thinking one of the inept constables of the city had gone mad and was attempting to arrest him, immediately disappeared.

“What are you doing here?” asked Pedro in depression.

“God is good and put it in my mind to find your voices and put bodies to them,” said the old man.

“Holy Christ,” said Pedro. The liquor made him despondent.

“You have surely recognized that I am riding the wondrous steed of legend, the incomparable Bucephalus,”

“We are so familiar,” said Pedro, “that we had supper together yesterday night.”

“Your friend who is hiding behind that tree must be one of the race of shy human beings,” said the old man. “He wants to be invisible.”

“You cannot see me,” said the poacher from behind the tree, “because I am not here.”

The old man nodded agreeably. “Then let us continue talking,” he said, “but pretend this conversation is not taking place.”

Branston manages to sustain the same wry tone for 314 pages, while also ruminating intelligently through his characters on big subjects like grief and friendship.

When you want picaresque entertainment but are intimidated by Don Quixote itself, give Tilting at Windmills a read. You won't be sorry.