texts&pretexts was faced with a labour revolt today when members of our editorial collective learned of the existence of a scholarship which pays people to read:

A Madrid taxi driver has won a competition to be paid to read Miguel de Cervantes’ literary masterpiece, Don Quixote. Taxi driver Javier Carretero successfully applied for a grant of €642 to take time off from driving his Skoda Octavia in order to read Spain’s classic text. He must read sitting in front of a webcam and answer daily questions from internet users, who can see him at Dineroparaleer.com The grant is part of a campaign to get more Spaniards reading. It is unclear how long it will take Mr. Carretero to plough his way through the lengthy work.

Everyone was poised to hand in their notice until they threw the original Spanish web page at a Babelfish translator, and took a moment to read the fine print of the deal.

Apparently the following schedule must be adhered to: reading is to begin promptly at 9:00 am every morning and end at 6:00 pm. A 5 minute rest is allowed every hour, and a meal break of one hour is permitted between 1 and 2. At 5:30 pm the reader will participate in a 30 minute Internet chat session answering questions about his daily reading.

This sounds hellishly unpleasant and a sure-fire way to turn someone off reading entirely. We can’t help but wonder at the consequences if Mr. Carretero fails to maintain the necessary reading rigor and falls behind. What if he gets a tough question (“In his 1935 book Don Quixote: An Introduction to Psychology, leading Spanish literary expert Salvador de Madariaga refers to what he calls the ‘sanchification’ of Don Quixote and the ‘quixotification’ of Sancho. How does each character affect the other?”) and answers incorrectly? (“…?”)

Perhaps he will be forced to read The Da Vinci Code instead…