Blurring The Boundaries

On the day I began reading Cervantes' Don Quixote, I went to see The Man Who Killed Don Quixote at the cinema. It was worth waiting almost thirty years for this; another of Terry Gilliam's masterly explorations of the battle between fantasy and reality, following in the great tradition of Time Bandits, Brazil, The Adventures Of Baron Munchausen and The Fisher King. An Oscar could go to either Adam Driver or Jonathan Pryce next year, I predict.

I'm already enjoying Cervantes' novel. It's amazing that even as long ago as 1605, authors were playing with such meta-textual ideas challenging the author's purpose and skill; writing deliberate holes in the plot to make it is as ropy as the stories it is satirising; blurring the boundaries between fiction and non-fiction; including fictional footnotes, appendices, citations and references to lend gravitas to the work; referencing an unauthorised Don Quixote novel in order to render that version of the character fiction  as opposed to the non-fiction Cervantes' version. This is going to be a lot of fun!