“It is in an unrelated incident years before that Why I bought Belcher’s…has its root: at a wedding. My daughter was attending her girlfriend’s father’s wedding to a physically pretty woman: but with an alcohol problem. During the partying the bride, very drunk according to my daughter, produced a loaded pistol which, brandishing, she threatened to use against her guests. This was before even Columbine High, before the series of gun-related massacres that followed and made me aware that the United States had a very real problem. “But how I tied a wedding gone horribly wrong to a series of gun-related massacres, and both to such a great novel as Don Quixote I still do not know: except that unconsciously I must have. “Consider the similarities between Cervantes’ great novel and my more modest effort. Don Quixote is driven to madness by over-indulgence in the romance novels of his day.
