I first read this detestable book at university and loathed every page of it. However, after my recent about-face with Crime and Punishment, I decided to give it another try. First published in 1605, the book was a huge success and went on to become the crown jewel of Spanish literature. Understandably, its style, themes, and meandering, episodic plot do not translate well to a modern reader, although this has not prevented me from enjoying other, similar works of early literature. The History of Tom Jones (1749) for instance, another book with an epic scope dealing in bawdy themes and delivering lengthy, irrelevant digressions, remains one of the finest and funniest comic novels ever written. The core premise of Don Quixote, that of a formerly respectable hidalgo being brainwashed by chivalric romances and deciding to become a knight errant, is not a bad one, but the joke is already laboured thin not far into the first volume. The humour is slapstick, crude and excessively cruel even for its time, with Cervantes sadistically abusing his mentally ill knight and simple minded squire, Sancho Panza. The pages are full of outdated preoccupations with maidenly virtue and chastity, concepts that are an utter chore to read through. Unsure of his ability to stretch the tenuous gimmick into a full length book, Cervantes sprinkles the plot with tediously long, unrelated tales narrated by other characters. Even the translator in the introduction encourages readers to skip these. But let's discuss part two, the sequel...
Don Quixote's sequel is interesting in that it was already 'plagiarised' and published by a literary rival before Cervantes finished writing his own. The first part ends with Cervantes making an open invitation for others to pick up the quill and continue the adventures, then when somebody (Avellaneda) comes along and does just that, his reaction is one of outrage. This is the seventeenth century equivalent of selling one's rights to an intellectual property and then regretting it when the work becomes a valuable franchise. As a result of this literary banditry, Cervantes abuses the copy cat author's plot, characterisation and writing style at every opportunity. In a decidedly meta manoeuvre to decanonise his rival's plot, he has Don Quixote abandon his pilgrimage to the jousts in Saragossa, and head to Barcelona instead. His pettiness does not stop there, Cervantes has his duo meet a character from the fake Quixote and forces the imposter book to be legally discredited by a tribunal. In a final attempt to ward off future bootleggers, Cervantes kills off Don Quixote at the end of the novel. This would all have made for an interesting footnote had it not been for Cervantes' insistence on dragging the scandal into his own plot. He opens part two with a bad grace where he spends a good few pages ranting and raving about the impudence of Avellaneda, whilst insisting that he is not at all bitter. It makes for a curious case of somebody trying to take the dignified high road, but being utterly incapable of doing so. To complicated things even further, Cervantes makes the first volume exist in the same universe as his characters, using it as a wry opportunity to poke fun at his own writing, mostly notably the unpopular digressions, and also to justify some glaring plot inconsistencies.
My main problem with Cervantes is that his source material is not nearly as clever or as funny as he thinks it is. As when a child does something to inadvertently amuse an audience, and dogmatically repeats the action in an attempt to elicit the same reaction, so Cervantes runs his characters into the ground. Perhaps sensing that the dead horse is soundly flogged, he eventually switches tactics by expressly telling us just how memorable Don Quixote's blunders are and how funny Sancho's banter is. He does this by criticising Avellaneda's portrayals, insisting that his own are superior, yet at the same time, delivering very little of worth. He commits the cardinal sin of basking in the success of his previous volume, bringing up past adventures and reminiscing about how intelligently written they were. By the time I reached the galling section with the Duke and Duchess who play a series of extended practical jokes on the protagonists, I knew that I was in for a rough time. With grim effort and determination, I reached the end of the book, vowing to never pick it up again in much the same way as Don Quixote finally comes to his senses and renounces knight errantry. Overall, this is a model example of when a good idea is utterly ruined by its own success.
Rating: 1/5
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