Finally finished Don Quixote, just under the wire for 2025.
After hundreds and hundreds of pages that were mostly "Don Quixote and Sancho meet a random traveler, who hijacks the novel to tell their personal story for several chapters, despite being largely similar to similar tales from other travelers," the story picks up in the last 250 or so pages, with nobles who decide to prank the pair with making all the stuff they imagine come true (I think we're supposed to be laughing at Quixote and Sancho, but it basically makes the nobles come off as jerks, while our two protagonists come off pretty heroically and nobly) and then a final successful conspiracy to get Don Q to give up being a knight, after which he essentially dies of despair, renouncing his chivalrous ways.
A lot of pop culture needs to be audience tested less, but this is one where in addition to an editor, someone needed to sit down and ask Cervantes whether he wanted the audience to like Don Quixote or not, because Cervantes is all over the place on this. I think modern audiences would mostly be on Quixote's side, in the way that we like the well-meaning but at times delusional characters on Parks & Rec.
For me, the book was just OK, although I'm sure it's a lot better for native speakers, who will pick up on a lot of allusions I know I missed and for whom this is a formative cultural text in the way that Shakespeare is for modern English-speaking pop culture.
As I finished it, though, I realized there's probably enough stuff in the implied setting that Don Quixote believes in to add up to a slim Shadowdark zine, so I might do that. Obviously, it's a job better handled by a Castilian speaker, creating something similar to
Brancalonia, but hopefully me cranking out six to eight pages of Quixote-inspired stuff won't offend the native speakers too badly.
