"While clearly a masterpiece, Don Quixote suffers from one fairly serious flaw — that of outright unreadability. This reviewer should know, because he has just read it. ... Looming like one of the Don's chimerical adversaries, it is a giant...But the giant has a giant weight problem and is elderly, and soft-brained. Reading Don Quixote can be compared to an indefinite visit from your most impossible senior relative, with all his pranks, dirty habits, unstoppable reminiscences, and terrible cronies. When the experience is over, and the old boy checks out at last (on page 846 — the prose wedged tight, with no breaks for dialogue), you will shed tears all right; not tears of relief or regret but tears of pride. You made it, despite all that Don Quixote could do."