Close Readings The Man Behind the Curtain: ‘Don Quixote’ by Miguel de Cervantes
In The Man Behind the Curtain, a bonus Close Readings series for 2026, Tom McCarthy and Thomas Jones examine great novels in terms of the systems and infrastructures at work in them. For their first episode, they turn to the book that invented the modern novel. Don Quixote, the ingenious man from La Mancha, is thought to be mad by everyone he meets because he believes he’s living in a book. But from a certain point of view that makes the hero of Cervantes’ novel the only character who has any idea what’s really going on. Tom and Tom discuss the machinery – narrative, theoretical, economic, psychological and literal (those windmills) – which underpins Cervantes’ masterpiece.
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Further reading in the LRB:
Karl Miller on ‘Don Quixote’:
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v08/n03/karl-miller/andante-capriccioso
Michael Wood: Crazy Don
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v17/n15/michael-wood/crazy-don
Gabriel Josipovici on Cervantes’ life:
Robin Chapman: Cervantics
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v08/n16/robin-chapman/cervantics