The ingenious hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha

The premise is interesting: an old man looses his mind and believes himself to be an errant knight and the world to be a huge chivalry novel. So everywhere he sees there is adventure to be had. Giants to kill, princess to save, fame and honor to be gained through valiant deeds.

Don Quixote hires a squire named Sancho Panza, a simple minded peasant that follows his master everywhere he goes. Because he's limited intelligence, Sancho actually believes everything his master imagines. So when Don Quixote says that the he is about to charge are actually giants, he is mistrustful at first, because all he sees are windmills. But when Don Quixote then says that the giants are concealed as windmills by the way of magic from an evil sorcerer, Sancho believes in him.

It is a simple yet sufficient logic. Because although mad, Don Quixote is still an intelligent and rational person.

Together, they travel trough Spain getting themselves into a lot of trouble. No matter what they face though, Don Quixote always maintains his delusional view of himself and the world. When all logical explanations fail, he blames it on magic. It is a perfect kind of madness.

Although not every adventure is very interesting, what killed the book for me were the many short stories intertwined inside the main plot. So Don Quixote might find someone in trouble on the road, and that person would tell him how he came to be in that predicament. Or maybe he finds a book, and then the next few pages is the story of that particular book.

All of these breaks the immersion of the plot and prevents me from appreciating the characters. The story isn't that strong to survive all this interruptions.

I read this in two parts, fair enough since it was published in two books ten years apart. I was surprised by how much the first part departed from Don Quixote's adventures to interpolate other stories from different people he meets along the way, and even a manuscript he finds (which may have been written by Cervantes himself, in a metafictional touch). The second part keeps the focus firmly upon the Don, because he has now become famous through Cervantes's novel (more metafiction), though a rival false Quixote is also abroad. His persona has hardened because of the self-consciousness this necessitates, but at least the story stays in one track throughout.

It was all very confusing and muddled, and I need to read it again to understand better what was partly obscured by my previous assumptions and ideas about one of the most famous books in the world. But I would already argue with anybody who sees Don Quixote as a benign, kindly champion of idealism and of the imagination, a notion that seems to be common. He's a coward and a fool, who can prate of great deeds but does nothing worthwhile. As such, he is probably a good representative for humanity, but the honestly self-serving Sancho is more palatable.

What to say about Don Quixote that hasn't already been said many, many times already? I suppose the thing that struck me most about the book was Cervantes's extreme self awareness. You are constantly being reminded that you are, in fact, reading a novel, almost to the point where one could argue that Cervantes was the first postmodern novelist. The concept in Part II of having it take place after Part I had been released, and characters knew of Don Quixote from reading his histories, as well as his focus on the fake Quixote in the latter part of Part II is genius. It's also hilarious, packing jokes and wordplay (that most often, sadly, do not translate into English very well) in every chapter. And although it isn't the most emotionally charged book of all time, it still stirred me as it all was coming to a close. As for downsides, the novel can be meandering at times, and go on for pages without very much introspection/physical events actually occurring, and most of the novel is fairly cut and dry. However, this novel is a must-read for anyone that wants to understand the Western Canon, or just wants to read a very good classic.