"All the chivalric romance is long dead and gone� But the travesty Don Quixote is alive and kicking� The strange ones are the fittest�

…the castellan brought out the book in which he had jotted down the hay and barley for which the mule drivers owed him, and, accompanied by a lad bearing the butt of a candle and the two aforesaid damsels, he came up to where Don Quixote stood and commanded him to kneel. Reading from the account book � as if he had been saying a prayer � he raised his hand and, with the knight’s own sword, gave him a good thwack upon the neck and another lusty one upon the shoulder, muttering all the while between his teeth. He then directed one of the ladies to gird on Don Quixote’s sword, which she did with much gravity and composure; for it was all they could do to keep from laughing at every point of the ceremony, but the thought of the knight’s prowess which they had already witnessed was sufficient to restrain their mirth.

As soon as the mocking accolade is over Don Quixote is off to fight evil, to defeat monsters, to perform feats and to save damsels in distress�

“And if,� said Sancho, “those gentlemen wish to know who the valiant one was who did this to them, your Grace may inform them that he is the famous Don Quixote de la Mancha, otherwise known as the Knight of the Mournful Countenance.�
At this the knight inquired of his squire what had led him to call him by such a title at that particular moment.
“I can tell you,� said Sancho. “I was looking at you for a time by the light of the torch that poor fellow carried; and truly, your Grace now has the worst-looking countenance that I have ever seen, whether due to exhaustion from this combat or the lack of teeth and grinders, I cannot say.�

The valorous life of knight-errant is full of hardship so every new feat brings a new sorrow.
The grandiose epic continues: Sancho Panza plays his role of the squire and governor; Don Quixote plays his role of the valiant hero and all the rest play the roles of his adversaries or allies� Adventures, quests, mishaps and show go on�

“One plays the ruffian, another the cheat, this one a merchant and that one a soldier, while yet another is the fool who is not so foolish as he appears, and still another the one of whom love has made a fool. Yet when the play is over and they have taken off their players� garments, all the actors are once more equal.�
“Yes,� replied Sancho, “I have seen all that.�
“Well,� continued Don Quixote, “the same thing happens in the comedy that we call life, where some play the part of emperors, others that of pontiffs � in short, all the characters that a drama may have � but when it is all over, that is to say, when life is done, death takes from each the garb that differentiates him, and all at last are equal in the grave.�

Many brave knights fought dragons and won but no one remembers their names� Don Quixote fought just a single windmill and even if he failed to defeat it, everyone knows him."

"I’m sorry to say this was not for me. Part of the problem is Alexis’s novel “Fifteen Dogs� is such a perfect book that my expectations are very high for anything else this author writes. Specifically my problem with the stories here is the amount of exposition, which I eventually lost patience with. Okay let’s say the first story in the collection is set in a natural cadence of an older lusher style of writing that begins with a languid description of place and character. Fine, fine. But even granting its written in this style it goes on and goes on and goes on, until I was itching to get to the transition, the sentence that begins with ‘One day…� or something like it, and the action begins. I felt the same irritable way about most of the other stories: too much explaining. That said I feel I might be an outlier here because after all what is the rush when things are so beautifully painted on the page? I’m a lout, my mind kept interrupting my reading to mutter: too many words. "