I've almost reached half way through the book, but I can't bare the thought of not knowing the outcome of the couple, the Spaniard and his beautiful 'moro' princess who after saving her young man lost all wealth, security and family in favour of a Catholic life in Spain.
There seems to be no more mention of them, I can't stand it, I've lost my focus for the plight of the Knight and his sorry face and Sancho, and well I was just wondering are there any more delicious stories that come the reader's way??
I suppose Cervantes had to dispose of the girl's richess to prove that the young man really loved her and that they rode of into the sunset together, but ... I really don't know if I can bring myself to carry on reading.
What do you reckon?

As you've discovered, the Quijote is not a linear novel in the modern sense. The narrative wanders off in all sorts of interesting, often very comical directions.

Don Quijote and Sancho's story is episodic to begin with, but then Cervantes interpolates into their tale a number of essentially unrelated short stories. (Many of these will be missing, of course, if you're reading an abridged edition.) One of my professors theorized that the novel was a relatively new genre at the time, and writers such as Cervantes didn't quite trust it, so they threw in tantalizing side journeys into other characters' stories.

I remember while student teaching my master teacher working a lesson on "El Quixote" and mentioning to his students that the average novel has something like 6-10 characters that are developed. Don Quixote has over 600 characters in it.

Cervantes, new genre or not, was a master author and storyteller. Of course having been through all the life experiences he had, there were many stories to tell, and many 'characters' upon which to base those tales. I still say that Don Quixote is the greatest novel ever written...and it was the West's first!

The second part of the Quixote is the one I liked more, you notice how Don Quixote feels that he is not so strong, not so good knight, maybe mad, but he doesn't want to realise about it.
Anyway, it was a little bit hard for me to read it

Yes it's true, it's like a long journey and meeting all the characters one would on such a 'camino'.
I stopped reading it last year through sheer frustration but at the same time awe. I have to find out what lies ahead, how can I not.
It's a gem alright.
My unabridged Penguin version is by John Rutherford, and is meant to be a 'landmark' translation. Seems good to me.

btw. did anyone see the film about the making of 'The man from la Mancha'? A group of filmakers asked Terry Gillingham, (director of the film) whether they could document his realisation of Don Quixote. Much to their delight, the documentary was more successful than the actual film which remains on the back burner due to a series of set backs and bad luck.
Shame, it might have been a good adaptation. grrr.

...wasn't that Terry Gilliam from the Monty Python gang, not Gillingham?

My friend Rudy Mercado was doing the art for that movie. He had invited me and a girlfriend (this was before I met my future wife!) to tour the set, but unfortunately the leading man became ill (he was old), and the whole project had to be canceled. Too bad. Rudy also did the scenic work on both Goya movies and others.

Boy, is timing everything!

I haven't read Don Quixote, except in bits and peices, since college (an extremely dog-eared and tattered edition at this point)and decided today to pick up a new copy. Poking in the bookstore I came across two translations (my Spanish will never be good enough to read it in the original!) and the differences were far greater than I expected.

A previous post cited the Penquin edition which was one of the two I was comparing. I purchased The Modern Library (publisher) edition - translated by Tobias Smollett with an intro by Carlos Fuentes. I don't recall who did the translation in the Penguin version - but from the first paragraph on, the two versions are so vastly different. I got rather fascinated with the this and started comparing different chapters, etc - that random opening to a different chapter here and there - and all the way through the entire 1000 or so pages - the versions are completely different.

I know translations do differ but some of what I was seeing was far more than I expected. More or less creating a different tone -

So, all you linguists and professors out there, please share thoughts ....

I don't trust translations to have the nuances of the original. It took me forever to get through the thing, but it was worth it. It's like reading Shakespeare. You have to read all the footnotes and think through every paragraph (extra hard because our dictionaries don't cover archaic language.)

As to the multiple characters and digressions...and this is just a thought that came to me with no research on it at all...possibly this is the ultimate example of the romance languages' discourse pattern as presented by Robert Kaplan. English (both UK and US versions) are linear, but writers of romance languages digress as a matter of style. I had the pleasure of replicating one of Kaplan's examples of this as part of my MA in linguistics. That may not be the only reason for the complexity of the novel, but it may be a contributing factor.

El Quijote is a great novel for a reason

It is very difficult to understand, not only the story itself, but the spanish used is sometimes archaic, and it has a richness of vocabulary that surpases what an average spaniard handle in all his life.

If I recall it well, I think that an average spaniard handles 5,000 words or so, while El Quijote uses about 20,000 or more...

It is the essence of spanish language.

Fernando