A New Perspective (Don Quixote)

We were eager to Hypnovelize the book most often credited, more than any other, with being the world’s first novel — a book so enrapturing, so funny, so melancholy, so epic, the passage of nearly a half-millennium since its appearance has done nothing to dim its brilliance: Don Quixote by Cervantes.

DQ is probably world literature’s most celebrated deluded character, one who might even be called “pathetic” given his obliviousness to the gap between how he sees himself and how the world sees him. To him, windmills are giants he must vanquish; he concocts all kinds of stories to get through the day. (Then again… don’t we all? Who are we to call him deluded? Apologies, dear Quixote.) In illustrations, he is usually depicted as something other than heroic; in the famous Picasso drawings, he, his tired horse Rocinante, and his squat loyal sidekick Sancho Panza are smaller than life. DQ is way past his prime, hardly someone to fear.

And then we Hypnovelized the first pages of Chapter 1 of the book.

We got something we were not expecting. At first we thought The Dreamaker had simply ignored our instructions. But then we realized: the opening passage of the novel artfully (and humorously) captures the essence of Don Quixote’s overreaching self-regard. What the rendered video seemed to show was the world seen through his eyes, not him seen through the world’s.

We were surprised — and pleased.