Disclaimer: I read Don Quixote for my NYPL reading group, and I don’t think I would have made it through the 940 page novel without that incentive. Truthfully I didn’t make it through the 940 pages, but did read the whole first part, started the second, and read the last 120 pages. The Quixote scholar who came to our reading group, said the second half, published 10 years after the first, was the better of the two. So admittedly I didn’t get the full experience, but I think that the 650 or so pages I did read gave me a pretty good sense of the book.

Don Quixote is an astonishing novel on many levels, and though it was written in 1615, it has employs very contemporary narrative strategies, such as meta-narrative, intertextuality, and various extra-diegetic rants on literature and religion. The central story of course is about Alonoso Quixano, the nobleman who reads two many chivalric romantic novels, and convinces himself that it is his destiny to travel the countryside as a knight errant, defending damsels and orphans and others in need. So he saddles up his mangy horse Rocinante grabs a poor neighboring farmer Sancho Panza, dubs himself “Don Quixote de la Mancha” and wanders off in the countryside looking for adventure. Don Quixote is so steeped in his fantasy that he’s able to explain every situation through the lens of the chivalric novel. He encounters a series of windmills, and is convinced they are giants, so he attacks the sails. They come to an inn, and he is convinced it is a castle, the prostitutes are ladies in waiting. The combination of his delusional state and his impulse to intervene (usually with violence) results in one absurd mishap after another. Sancho Panza, the half-witted “squire” is a skeptical tag-along throughout the story, who frequently bears the brunt of Don Quixote’s adventures. Quixote has told Sancho that when his deeds become known world wide and he marries a princess, he will give Sancho an Island “insula” to govern. Sancho so wants that insula, that he goes along with Quixote’s crazy explanations for his behavior, sometimes becoming his enabler, other times trying to hold Quixote back from destruction.

This central story is compelling and comical, particularly the aphorism-filled banter between Quixote and Sancho while they are on the road. There are many stories within stories, as the protagonists encounter characters on their travels who recite ballads, poems, or tell them stories. Since their wanderings have no particular aim, the journey seems to just be a vehicle for Cervantes to keep us entertained with one inventive story after another. One of the more famous of these stories in Part 1 is the story of “The Impertinently Curious Man,” in which a man becomes obsessed with his wife’s fidelity, and asks his best friend Lothario to try to seduce her as a test. His experiment has disastrous consequences, as the ruse becomes reality and Lothario tries to seduce his wife.

Periodically Cervantes voice pops up quite strongly in the book, particularly in his not-so-veiled literary criticism of his peers. In one scene, Quixote’s friends, the Priest and the Barber, are going through his library trying to understand the cause of his dementia. They decide the books of chivalry must be removed from his library and burned. Book by book they make their way through his collection, discussing each book’s merits and whether it should be saved or scorched. They come across one of Cervantes’ books appears and it is rescued from the bonfire.

In addition to the compelling story, literary criticism, and stories-within-stories, there is also the meta-narrative. The reader is told that in fact Don Quixote actually existed, and what we are reading is a historical account by a Moorish historian Cide Hamete Benengeli. In fact, we are told, Cide’s first book on Quixote (the first half of the novel) is so popular that many people Quixote meets while back on the road in Part 2 have read the book and know who he is. The book’s central question of the relative nature of the real takes on yet another dimension.

I spent two months making my way through this book, and could have easily spent several more. The Cervantes scholar at our reading group described reading this for the first time while in graduate school, and knowing for certain that he had found his life’s work. The book is quite dense, and sometimes Cervantes’ rants become a little tedious. But the layers of storytelling, are definitely worth wading through.