Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616)

The first part of Don Quixote is tedious. It's the same joke, told over and over again, and it's a joke that's not all that funny to begin with. Quixote is delusional, Sancho is weak-willed, and they wander around like the countryside like punching bags so that Cervantes can take cheap shots at innkeepers, rustics, the clergy, and anyone else he's built up resentment against. It's no wonder most people give up after a few hundred pages. You ever wonder why nobody mentions anything but the show more windmill scene? That's the first adventure, and it's as far as most readers will get.

So why is it so good? Because Part 2 changes all that.

When Part 2 begins, people have already heard of Don Quixote, having read of his exploits in Part 1. Some of them have even read a counterfeit sequel, and mention exploits which Don Quixote dismisses as bogus. As a result, most people humor the famous madman, and more than a few play tricks on him for their own entertainment. The vicious beatings are conspicuously absent, though there is still the occasional good-natured slapstick.

In this part, Quixote is the fool and Sancho is savvy. There seems to be a movement away from the rather spiteful treatment of the characters in Part 1, which was exagerrated in the counterfeit sequel that was published to meet popular demand (and which spurred Cervantes to write Part 2 in order to regain control of his characters). But there might be more to it than just distancing himself from the counterfeit novel.

When Cervantes wrote the first part, he was bitter and neglected, having been jailed for fraud, enslaved by pirates, and entirely failing to make an impression with his novels and plays. His attacks on chivalric romances may very well be the sneering of a bitter old man at the misguided choices of his youth. He kicks Quixote and Sancho around because they are motivated by the same blind optimisim that he had as a young man, or that he sees around him as a middle-aged one. One more to the ribs? Why not! Siiiing-ing in the RAAAAAAIIINNN!

When Cervantes wrote the second part, he has found success, and his characters are directly responsible for it. They are popular. He's not going to make anything bad happen to them. So he goes easy on the two, improving their characters (Don Quixote demonstrates his intelligence in occasional learned discourse, and Sancho repeatedly exceeds the expectations of those he encounters), coddling them a bit. Having read Part 1, as have the bulk of the characters in Part 2, the reader goes along with it. Hey, these aren't bad guys -- let's humor them and see what they come up with. Who doesn't need a foolish and, dare I say it, quixotic madman to wander into their life now and again?

It is Part 2 that makes this happen. Without it, we would not have the word quixotic. It completely redeems the first part, even leading one to (erroneously but favorably) consider that the first part is just an overlong setup for the second.

One final thing: this is called the first modern novel for a reason. The framing device used in the first part ("this is the story of the Man from La Mancha, pieced together from various sources, one in Arabic that I had to get a pretty Moroccan boy to translate") is just a taste, just a small jab at the way chivalric romances were written.

Things really start to get meta in Part 2. Not only have the secondary characters read the first part, they demand an accounting of the errors and inconsistencies it contains (and there are more than a few). They critique the style, fuming at the various novels-within-a-novel (such as "The Impertinently Curious Gentleman") that rightfully do not appear in Part 2.

At an inn, Quixote and Sancho overhear a group of guys in the next room reading from their history -- but it's the wrong history! There are escapades being told which they never had a part in. They learn of the "spurious second book" by Avellaneda, and rapidly disavow any knowledge of its events, scorning the characters of Don Quixote'* and Sancho' in that work as one-dimensional caricatures.

Later, they encounter Avellaneda himself, and learn from him that there is another Don Quixote (and another Sancho), an attention-seeker likely inspired by what he read in the first book. This Don Quixote' is not intelligent, his Sancho' not savvy, and he is currently tucked away in a madhouse.

Quixote convinces Avellaneda that he is the original, far superior version of Don Quixote, and has Avellaneda draft and sign a statement to the effect that the other Don Quixote' is an imposter, that all of the adventures of this Don Quixote' are invented, and that he (Don Quixote), the bearer of this statement, is the true, original, and uncontested Don Quixote. Top that [a:Mark Z. Danielewski|13974|Mark Z. Danielewski|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1348252837p2/13974.jpg]!

Part 2 concludes with the death of Don Quixote and the warning to readers that there can and will be no further adventures of Don Quixote and Sancho. Probably the only way of enforcing copyright in the seventeenth century.

* prime show less

Two books, really, one written ten years after the super-popular sensation of the first three Sallies of our intrepid Knight Errant, the collected stories here are something really special.

It doesn't even matter that I read a translation from the Spanish of 1605. Or that the numerous references to Chivalry are half-super obscure or relegated to fantasy (or possible fantasy, for you historical purists and hopefuls).

Once we start this comic masterpiece, it becomes something a lot more than a show more chivalric romance tempered by sheer sarcasm, optimism, delusion, realism, or idealism writ large. It cleverly becomes anything you want as a reader. :)

For idealists and the imaginative at heart, Don Quixote is the hero that never gives up on his dreams no matter what anyone says. Assumed mad by everyone around him, he still manages to be perfectly rational about EVERYTHING except the idea of Chivalry. It consumes everything he does and while it does get him into a LOT of trouble... like getting beat up by a windmill... it also charms the living hell out of almost everyone he meets. The pursuit of his dream fascinates everyone even as they laugh at him.

For the sarcastic and the sardonic among us, we laugh at Don Quixote for the way he shines a spotlight on our own stupid crap and we are shocked and amazed when we discover that he might be RIGHT in his decisions when compared to what "normal", "regular" society thinks and does. His lunacy is almost a divine lunacy. Satire? Absolutely.

For the realist in us, we despair because NO ONE lives by sane rules. Not our neighbors, society, nor the holy idealists that shoot their arrows into the void of absurdity. Sancho Panza fights and fights, trying to keep his old friend alive despite everything, getting beat over the head repeatedly by the lunacy... until he gives in. Broken. And just goes along with reality, taking whatever scraps he can in hopes that the emperor's new clothes will start to fit him.

Gorgeous stuff. Any of us could take any kind of read we want out of this, and there's a lot more than just these three ways to read it. But above all, it's all funny as hell, timely even now, and smart in a way that only the most brilliant books are smart. And timeless.

Anyone upon reading this can see how it influences a vast stream of books that came after. Or TV shows. I think of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Adventures of Baron Munchausen, Confederacy of Dunces, and even American Psycho.

Of course, I'm sure most people will think of more standard titles, but from TS Eliot to the Dark Tower to Spaghetti Westerns to the Seven Samurai, the influence is still insanely clear. :)

A true classic. show less

As with many staples of classic literature, I wasn't entirely sure what to make of Don Quixote before I read the first page. I braced myself for flowery, poetic, and consistently obtuse prose. I braced myself for needless pontificating.

And sure, there is some of that. However, what I was surprised by was how funny this book is -- even now, more than 400 years since its original publication. It's also remarkably accessible. Some of that, I'm sure, is due to Edith Grossman's translation for show more this edition, but the story itself doesn't fall down unnecessary rabbit holes, as I often find classic literature does. That's not to say there aren't moments of, dare I say, plodding repetition. Despite my enjoyment of the meta nature of their inclusion, I found the discussions about literature to be, well, repetitive.

But as a whole, it's easy to see why Don Quixote is heralded as one of the most impressive books to be published. It's an adventure at its core, with a ton of unique and odd characters (led, of course, by the strangest of them all, that titular knight errant). show less

I hadn't realized that what I had read of Don Quixote in high school was only about half the book. There are so many more stories here! I love how the book is stories within stories all focused around Don Quixote's belief that he's a chivalrous knight. He drags others through his adventures and they decide that his books of fiction, which obviously caused his dementia, are too dangerous. The stories serve to point out that great works of fiction add to our lives by providing escape and show more entertainment and are not dangerous at all. show less