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Miguel de Cervantes and the Case of the Fake Don Quixote · Ridiculous History

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Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio being
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Speaker 1: Anito's Ridiculous Historians. Thank you so much as always for
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Speaker 1: tuning in. My name is Ben, and I am over
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Speaker 1: the moon today because we get a chance to talk
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Speaker 1: about one of my favorite books growing up. Hey Ben,
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Speaker 1: I'm Nolan. I I have the song Return of the
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Speaker 1: Mac stuck in my head because I just date macaroni
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Speaker 1: and cheese on our episode pause uh for a quick
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Speaker 1: five minute lunch. My kid made some and I had
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Speaker 1: a couple of bites, and all of a sudden, Return
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Speaker 1: of the maca stuck in my head. I'm not gonna
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Speaker 1: sing it for copyright infringement reasons, but I hope it's
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Speaker 1: in all of your heads too. It's funny, you know,
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Speaker 1: I had never actually heard that song, but I'll look
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Speaker 1: it up after after we record today. And there's our
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Speaker 1: I see down here in our zoom call. Uh. You
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Speaker 1: know a Blue Sky super producer Casey pegram himself with
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Speaker 1: you know you've got the disappearing mic thing going on
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Speaker 1: to man, which I think is a cool look. Yeah.
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Speaker 1: If I if I shift my my body in a
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Speaker 1: certain direction and blocked the light, the mic appears to
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Speaker 1: float in mid air without a stand and then if
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Speaker 1: I move you can kind of see the stand come in.
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Speaker 1: But my background is a photo entitled Bliss, and it
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Speaker 1: was the default wallpaper for Windows ninety eight. I believe
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Speaker 1: the much maligned Windows was Windows. Wasn't Windows ninety eight maligned?
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Speaker 1: Or that was Windows two thousand that was maligned? I think,
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Speaker 1: wasn't it? I want to say, I think ninety eight
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Speaker 1: was kind of buggy m E. I think was the
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Speaker 1: one that everybody really really hated. Yes, Millennium Edition. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: and the diehards of us instead ended up getting Windows
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Speaker 1: two thousand or Windows XP or something. That's right. I
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Speaker 1: remember XP was okay, was good too, but it was
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Speaker 1: it was It was meant for like more like professional
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Speaker 1: enterprise kind of stuff, but it just sort of ended
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Speaker 1: up that everybody used it because Emmy was so buggy.
2:10
Speaker 1: Emmy was like the was like the new Coke or
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Speaker 1: the clear Pepsi of Microsoft. Exactly exactly. Wow, those os
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Speaker 1: is are all like twenty years old at this point.
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Speaker 1: Oh man. People people listening to this, they're probably thinking,
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Speaker 1: what are you? When you get to the point Ben
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Speaker 1: was said he was over the moon about something. What
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Speaker 1: was you can tell us, Ben, why are you over
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Speaker 1: the moon again? Oh? Man, I'm so glad you asked. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: this is a story that takes us to don Quixote.
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Speaker 1: Don Qyxote, as many of us will remember, is the
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Speaker 1: story of an eccentric man who believes that he is
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Speaker 1: a night. This is a fictional story, but it has
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Speaker 1: a lot in common with the true story of Emperor
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Speaker 1: Norton of the United States, which I believe we did
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Speaker 1: an earlier episode on. Anyway, don Quixote, the eponymous star
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Speaker 1: of the show in this novel, goes on a ton
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Speaker 1: of misadventures because he is head over heels in love
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Speaker 1: with Dulcinea. In the real world, Dulcinea is a peasant, uh,
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Speaker 1: and Don Quixote is not exactly a real world night.
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Speaker 1: This was written by a guy named Miguel de Savantes,
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Speaker 1: and it's still a hugely popular book today. And today
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Speaker 1: you can see the whole story published as like one thing.
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Speaker 1: But when it first came out in sixteen o five,
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Speaker 1: it was it was like the first half of the story,
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Speaker 1: and then the second half was published in sixteen fifteen,
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Speaker 1: and our story takes place between those two volumes, and
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Speaker 1: this one's a doozy. This is this is so cool.
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Speaker 1: That's true. Man, that's pretty big gap. But it really
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Speaker 1: speaks to how much of a blockbuster this thing was. Um.
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Speaker 1: It's considered one of the first true great novels, you know, Uh,
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Speaker 1: not the first, I believe there was a Japanese UH
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Speaker 1: one that was considered like the very first example of
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Speaker 1: a novel. We have to remember that, you know, movable
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Speaker 1: type was a relatively new development in the Western world.
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Speaker 1: Johannes Guttenberg UM took UH some methods that were pioneered
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Speaker 1: by the Chinese UM to create the printing press when
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Speaker 1: he combined them with paper. UM. And you know, obviously
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Speaker 1: the Bible was the most popular early use of the
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Speaker 1: printing press UM, and a different kind of political tracts
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Speaker 1: and treatises and stuff like that. But the novel, like
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Speaker 1: a full length novel, was relatively new thing. Um. Don
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Speaker 1: Quixote really benefited from this ability to mass produce printed works. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: and this made it less expensive to become literate, to
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Speaker 1: be able to read. So now that more people are reading,
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Speaker 1: there's a bigger market for printed books. And this this cycle,
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Speaker 1: luckily still UH is still in play today. Don Quixote
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Speaker 1: as a as a story as a publication benefits from this,
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Speaker 1: and it's funny because it's a little bit of a
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Speaker 1: meta narrative. And we'll explain what you mean by that
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Speaker 1: in in a little while, but let's talk about how
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Speaker 1: much of a blockbuster this was. So was first printed
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Speaker 1: in six five. Just ten years later there are more
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Speaker 1: than thirteen thousand copies. Getting some of this information from
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Speaker 1: an excellent article in Smithsonian. Uh don Quyote, of course,
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Speaker 1: originally written in Spanish, but it becomes popular as a
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Speaker 1: foreign publication in other parts of the world. In Brussels,
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Speaker 1: in Hamburg, there's an English translation Shakespeare. Yes that Shakespeare.
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Speaker 1: Old Willie Shakes himself reads it, and he likes it
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Speaker 1: so much that he apparently writes a play based on
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Speaker 1: one of the stories in the novel, which is a
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Speaker 1: neat fact that I did not know. Yeah, and I
6:11
Speaker 1: think it was lost right, And he supposedly co wrote
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Speaker 1: it with someone, which is interesting because that was not
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Speaker 1: really a thing. Uh he was, you know, there was
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Speaker 1: some talk that Christopher Marlowe was potentially actually Shakespeare actually
6:24
Speaker 1: wrote some of Shakespeare's plays that are but you don't
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Speaker 1: think of Shakespeare as being someone who like buddies up
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Speaker 1: with the co author. He's kind of a one man
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Speaker 1: band there. But yeah, he wrote a play called cardagno Um,
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Speaker 1: which was based on one of those uh kind of
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Speaker 1: meta tales within don Quixote. Just to set it up
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Speaker 1: really quickly, Ben, this is obviously a very important book
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Speaker 1: for you in your life. I personally have not read
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Speaker 1: the whole thing. I read the first several chapters as
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Speaker 1: an assignment, like in school, the one where he's talking
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Speaker 1: about fighting the windmills and all of that. I think
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Speaker 1: most people are familiar with, but I do not know
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Speaker 1: the other tales. But um, there's a frame story where
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Speaker 1: like a historian this sort of talking about finding the
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Speaker 1: lost uh, you know texts that referenced this, uh, this
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Speaker 1: story within the story. Where does it go from there? Ben?
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Speaker 1: This is interesting. At at the very end of that,
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Speaker 1: what would be the first volume of don Quixote in
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Speaker 1: six five, there's this setup, like you mentioned, it's very
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Speaker 1: clever setup where a scholar has quote unquote uncovered these
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Speaker 1: documents revealing the continued adventures of don Quixote, and the
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Speaker 1: scholar says, you know, eventually I would love to publish
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Speaker 1: them Servant's final words in this book, they translate to
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Speaker 1: something like, you know, I'll finish them, or quote, perhaps
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Speaker 1: someone else will sing with a better plectrum. A plectrum
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Speaker 1: is you know, it's a pick, like like you would
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Speaker 1: use a pick on a guitar. And and so some
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Speaker 1: people have kind of interpreted that message as an invitation,
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Speaker 1: sation from Cervantes himself to other authors to continue the story,
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Speaker 1: which is, you know, it's a thing that could happen.
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Speaker 1: But uh, that that goes to one of the big
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Speaker 1: questions was he asking, was really asking some other author
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Speaker 1: to pick up the pen and take us further into
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Speaker 1: the life of Don Quixote, or was he just you know,
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Speaker 1: kind of styling on it at the end with a
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Speaker 1: little mic drop. Either way, somebody did take him up
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Speaker 1: on what they saw as an invitation. It's true. And
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Speaker 1: and just just to backtrack ever so slightly, just to
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Speaker 1: give you a sense of what a massive hit this
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Speaker 1: was in the early days of broad printing distribution um
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Speaker 1: in the first edition, which I was trying to find,
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Speaker 1: Like I just said, I saw this in the research
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Speaker 1: and was thinking, like I wonder if you can get
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Speaker 1: a sixteen oh five first edition of Don Quixote. I'm
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Speaker 1: sure it's probably one of the most valuable, uh you know,
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Speaker 1: rare books that you could you could own, but I
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Speaker 1: didn't even find a price. But I'm sure it's very, very,
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Speaker 1: very precious. Um. But yeah, after that first edition in
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Speaker 1: sixteen o five, there were new editions printed across Castile
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Speaker 1: and Aragon which created and this isn't a huge number
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Speaker 1: of it at the time, and considering the largely you know,
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Speaker 1: there was manual parts of this printing situation. It was
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Speaker 1: movable because it was movable by hand. Um. There were
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Speaker 1: thirteen thousand, five hundred copies from the first ten years,
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Speaker 1: and then it gained notoriety outside of its native land,
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Speaker 1: uh is in places like Brussels, Milan and Hamburg in Germany.
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Speaker 1: Uh And then there was of course an English translation,
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Speaker 1: and that's the one that Shakespeare got ahold of that
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Speaker 1: inspired him to write that lost play. But you're right, then,
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Speaker 1: it does. It does have this sense that he's passing
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Speaker 1: the baton in some way with that line about the
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Speaker 1: better plectrum or whatever. And somebody did take that quite literally,
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Speaker 1: whether they were doing in homage or as a straight
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Speaker 1: rip off to capitalize on the Uh, you know, absolute
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Speaker 1: blockbuster success of Don Quixote. A gentleman by the name
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Speaker 1: of Alfonso Fernandez de Avallaneda came out with in that
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Speaker 1: interim between um, the first and second, you know, installments
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Speaker 1: of Don Quixote of the Servantis don Quixote, Uh, came
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Speaker 1: out with a book called Segundo Tomo del Ingenio Hidalgo
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Speaker 1: don Quixote de la Mancha. I hope I did that
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Speaker 1: relative justice and then came out thanks been in sixteen fourteen,
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Speaker 1: like a year before the second installment The Servant is one.
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Speaker 1: He's been hiden, We've been working on this whole time. Um,
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Speaker 1: he just you know, was taking his sweet time. That's
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Speaker 1: that's a long gap between books, but you know, it
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Speaker 1: takes a long time to write books. Genius cannot be forced.
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Speaker 1: There we go. Yeah, Yeah, Segundo Tomo deloso hid don
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Speaker 1: Quixote de la Mancha just translates to the second volume
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Speaker 1: of the Ingenious Hidalgo Don Quixote of the Mansion. So
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Speaker 1: it's it's not the most creative title, but it doesn't
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Speaker 1: need to be because the idea is that people will
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Speaker 1: see this and they'll have read this book they love
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Speaker 1: and they'll immediately snap up the sequel. By the way,
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Speaker 1: that Alonso name, uh, that's probably a pen name, a pseudonym.
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Speaker 1: The thing is, people were expecting this book, right, They
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Speaker 1: have been expecting a sequel for nine years, kind of
11:28
Speaker 1: like all our Song of Ice and Fire fans and
11:31
Speaker 1: the audience are still like me waiting for George R. R.
11:35
Speaker 1: Martin to publish Winds of Winter. George, if you're listening
11:39
Speaker 1: to podcast, I hope you're using the quarantine time wisely.
11:43
Speaker 1: I was about to say, uh, no, time like the president,
11:46
Speaker 1: Georg's come on, man, get it done. I did read it.
11:49
Speaker 1: There's a chapter of it that came out. It's it
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Speaker 1: would seemed great. I'm really exact because you know, I
11:53
Speaker 1: think everyone I think honestly not to get too off
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Speaker 1: off track. Probably to his benefit that people were so
12:00
Speaker 1: let down by the end of the series. So now
12:03
Speaker 1: he's got a chance to kind of redeem the franchise,
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Speaker 1: you know, and really come out with the way that
12:08
Speaker 1: he wanted to end it. And God help him if
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Speaker 1: he ends it in the exact same way, because that's
12:14
Speaker 1: just gonna wow talk about I mean, it's one thing
12:17
Speaker 1: to devote your time to a television series. It's another
12:20
Speaker 1: thing to devote your time to, like these massive books
12:23
Speaker 1: where he describes plates of food for twenty pages. You know,
12:26
Speaker 1: I mean, seriously, people are gonna be pist Yeah. That
12:31
Speaker 1: series is one of the best examples of why I
12:35
Speaker 1: have a policy now of not reading fantasy series unless
12:39
Speaker 1: they're already complete. I just I can't deal with it anymore.
12:42
Speaker 1: The heartbreak. And that's the situation. A lot of these
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Speaker 1: fans of Don Quixote were, and they said, you know,
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Speaker 1: we gotta have something, give us something, right the Second
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Speaker 1: Quixote book. What everybody leaves the Second Kyote Book to
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Speaker 1: be is weird because first off, it's definitely unauthorized, and secondly,
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Speaker 1: in the preface there are personal attacks on Cervantes himself.
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Speaker 1: Uh they say, you know, bad things about the guy.
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Speaker 1: And of course word gets back around to Cervantes. He
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Speaker 1: reads this, and he gets p o. This grinds his gears,
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Speaker 1: and this book starts being called the false Keyhote and
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Speaker 1: and Cervantes feels affronted. He's like, you know what I made, Keyhote.
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Speaker 1: This is my dude, I am the one who writes
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Speaker 1: these stories. That's right. And you know I was thinking
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Speaker 1: about this man. I'm sure you were too. The notion
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Speaker 1: that we have today we're so you know, used to
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Speaker 1: have intellectual property um and and like you know, trademarking
13:49
Speaker 1: a character, for example, I don't think would have been
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Speaker 1: in play at all, right, it would have just been
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Speaker 1: a matter of of decorum. You know. It was poor
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Speaker 1: formed to you what this guy did, but probably not
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Speaker 1: something that Servants could have taken any actual legal recourse. Again,
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Speaker 1: so instead, he, being a man known for his wits,
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Speaker 1: decided to retaliate in the way that he was most
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Speaker 1: equipped to do, which was to write, uh, this false
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Speaker 1: key Hotel idea into his true keyote sequel. Yeah, yeah,
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Speaker 1: it's brilliant. Just I want to step back just a
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Speaker 1: sec to give some context here. Uh, Servant is, in
14:31
Speaker 1: addition to being an amazing writer, was also like continually broke.
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Speaker 1: He wasn't uh, he wasn't super wealthy, just sort of
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Speaker 1: writing a novel on some kind of ladi da vibe.
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Speaker 1: He needed the novel to succeed to help him with
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Speaker 1: his continual money problems. He even got put in prison
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Speaker 1: one time on accusations of embezzlement or defrauding the state.
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Speaker 1: Would those be about the same thing at pends. I guess.
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Speaker 1: I mean, I think that you can embezzle from anyone,
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Speaker 1: but defrauding the state would be uh like probably evading
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Speaker 1: taxes or something like that, or maybe like cheating on
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Speaker 1: his taxes. Perhaps, Yeah, he was he was a tax collector.
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Speaker 1: Oh wow, Okay, I got it. Was he a gambler
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Speaker 1: or something that he had alcohol problems? What was his deal?
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Speaker 1: Why was he always so uh so broken and evading
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Speaker 1: the law like that? Yeah, details are a little bit
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Speaker 1: foggy for me on that part. At least I don't
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Speaker 1: recollect it. I hope my English teachers aren't mad at
15:30
Speaker 1: me if you all listen to the show. Uh, but
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Speaker 1: we do know that whatever the problem was, he definitely
15:37
Speaker 1: had money issues, and he did not have the scratch
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Speaker 1: the pony bones, the cheddar or the moo law to
15:45
Speaker 1: fight this through legal means whatever exists at the time.
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Speaker 1: So instead he wrote his own sequel, and he, as
15:53
Speaker 1: he said, Noel, wove this irritation he felt into that sequel.
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Speaker 1: He actually made Don Quixote defeat an impostor who was
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Speaker 1: drawn from that unauthorized version, and in in his story,
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Speaker 1: Quixote's false double shows up, and Quixote has to, uh,
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Speaker 1: you know, Kyote has to take care of him. And
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Speaker 1: this is weird because we should say Servantes didn't all
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Speaker 1: of a sudden start writing this when he learned of
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Speaker 1: the fake sequel. He had been writing this the entire time.
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Speaker 1: And he opens his own preface with like a distract
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Speaker 1: against this other thing, saying, quote, gentle reader, how eagerly
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Speaker 1: must thou be looking forward to this preface expecting to
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Speaker 1: find their retaliation scolding an abuse against the author of
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Speaker 1: the second Don Quixote. And then he just sort of
16:49
Speaker 1: like styles on him for a while and says, you know,
16:52
Speaker 1: this guy is gonna get it, And the entire argument
16:55
Speaker 1: that he's having with himself gets aired out in the
16:59
Speaker 1: second novel. It's a really creative way to respond. Like
17:02
Speaker 1: you see other authors, like maybe um Stephen King is
17:06
Speaker 1: famous for like having critics kind of show up in
17:10
Speaker 1: his work, but nowhere nearest extreme is what Savantes does well.
17:14
Speaker 1: And considering how close the release of this false Keyxote
17:18
Speaker 1: was to the release of the real one, he must
17:20
Speaker 1: have added this stuff in late in the game, right, Like,
17:22
Speaker 1: I mean, it's not like he was just he didn't
17:24
Speaker 1: write his second one in response to this. He was
17:27
Speaker 1: already planning it because the first one is done a cliffhanger,
17:31
Speaker 1: and like you said, he needed the scratch because he
17:33
Speaker 1: was experiencing extreme financial duress or whatever, so he must have,
17:37
Speaker 1: you know, when he found out about this gotten so
17:40
Speaker 1: hopping mad that he decided to go in and tweak
17:42
Speaker 1: it a little bit um. And it makes sense because
17:44
Speaker 1: the stories are a kind of modular they can be.
17:46
Speaker 1: There's there's multiple, you know, kind of self contained stories,
17:49
Speaker 1: and he was just able to add to one of them.
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Speaker 1: But I love I love the way he diss is
17:54
Speaker 1: this guy in in the preface because he's basically the
17:57
Speaker 1: same life now it's been It would be beneath me,
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Speaker 1: a gentleman of my stature, to call names and then
18:04
Speaker 1: proceeds to call names in saying these are the things
18:06
Speaker 1: that I won't do, which I always love that approach.
18:09
Speaker 1: That's such a fun, backhanded way to to talk smack
18:12
Speaker 1: to somebody. Yeah, I really, you know, I love that
18:16
Speaker 1: style so much, and it's still it's still lands even
18:19
Speaker 1: today in like if this guy were here now, he'd
18:22
Speaker 1: be writing for last Week Tonight or the Daily Show.
18:25
Speaker 1: Uh No, I think we have we have an excerpt here, right.
18:29
Speaker 1: This is the part that I really liked, where he's
18:30
Speaker 1: the whole backhanded, like who me kind of thing, where
18:33
Speaker 1: he goes thou wouldst have me call him ass fool
18:37
Speaker 1: and malapert but I have no such intention. Let his
18:41
Speaker 1: offense be his punishment with his bread, let him eat it,
18:46
Speaker 1: and there's an end of it. But that's not what
18:48
Speaker 1: happens at all. He was not going to leave well
18:52
Speaker 1: enough alone. Now, yeah, yeah, it's interesting. So one of
18:56
Speaker 1: the things that really blew my mind when I first
18:58
Speaker 1: read it is in second volume, don Quixote encounters like
19:04
Speaker 1: a form of celebrity. In the second half of what's
19:08
Speaker 1: published today is one volume, he beats characters who know
19:12
Speaker 1: him from the publication of the first book, and then
19:16
Speaker 1: in chapter fifty nine he learns of the rival sequel
19:21
Speaker 1: of aving Ada's book, and he is livid. He's like,
19:26
Speaker 1: this is not how I am. This book does not
19:30
Speaker 1: tray me accurately. And from that point on, from chapter
19:33
Speaker 1: fifty nine on, he just keeps making fun of this book,
19:38
Speaker 1: like mercilessly. Yeah. One of the characters that he meets
19:40
Speaker 1: from from the the Pretender, uh Quixote, is a character
19:44
Speaker 1: named Don Alvaro Tarfe and Quixote in in the second installment,
19:50
Speaker 1: makes him sign a waiver or an affidavit attested that
19:53
Speaker 1: the two have never met before. This is wonderful. It's
19:57
Speaker 1: just just like, yeah, he was really he was really
20:00
Speaker 1: having a good time with this. Honestly, it's funny because
20:03
Speaker 1: there are multiple examples of this, and you can imagine
20:06
Speaker 1: for people who read this book, if they don't know
20:10
Speaker 1: about the history behind this rival sequel, you can imagine
20:14
Speaker 1: how confusing it gets because now, all of a sudden,
20:17
Speaker 1: this is a story about a story, and Don Quixote
20:21
Speaker 1: is having these like more money, more problems kind of situations. Uh.
20:26
Speaker 1: There's there's one scene in chapter seventy where a character
20:29
Speaker 1: named Altisidora recounts her journey. She's talking about traveling to
20:35
Speaker 1: Hell and she sees some devils playing tennis with books
20:38
Speaker 1: instead of balls, and she notices one book in particular.
20:44
Speaker 1: We've got We've got a quote there too. I think
20:46
Speaker 1: that's right. Uh. It says one of them was brand new,
20:50
Speaker 1: well bound book. They gave such a stroke that they
20:53
Speaker 1: knocked the guts out of it and scattered the leaves about.
20:56
Speaker 1: Look what book that is, said one devil to another,
20:59
Speaker 1: and the other replied, it is second part of the
21:02
Speaker 1: history of don Quixote of La Mancha. Uh, yeah, it's
21:07
Speaker 1: it's not not by sid Hammett, which was the like
21:11
Speaker 1: the mist, I guess the historian that's this referenced in
21:14
Speaker 1: the original Don Quixote. And yeah, he's this scholar who
21:18
Speaker 1: was like, hey, I have more documents that will be
21:20
Speaker 1: coming in the second book. Yeah. And then the other
21:23
Speaker 1: devil said, out of this with it and into the
21:25
Speaker 1: depths of hell with it, out of my sight? And
21:29
Speaker 1: the other devil said, is it so bad? And then
21:32
Speaker 1: then then you got to do this one? Then this
21:33
Speaker 1: is great? So bad? Is it? Said the first devil
21:37
Speaker 1: that if I had set myself deliberately to make a
21:40
Speaker 1: worse I could not have done it. Wonderful, wonderful stuff,
21:46
Speaker 1: really really fun, really making me want to read all
21:49
Speaker 1: three of these just to see what's what? Um oh yeah,
21:52
Speaker 1: and then yeah, and then you know, like we were
21:53
Speaker 1: I was getting out earlier, there really was no copyright
21:57
Speaker 1: law to speak of, and we have a little bit
21:59
Speaker 1: more detail about that and how that looked like at
22:02
Speaker 1: the time. Yeah, so is this the best way to
22:05
Speaker 1: handle what is essentially fan fiction. I don't know, maybe not,
22:10
Speaker 1: but it's like the coolest, funniest way. So i'm I'm
22:14
Speaker 1: I'm not the best judge here. But Servantes was still
22:18
Speaker 1: like about a century early to modern copyright law. Uh
22:23
Speaker 1: you know, the thing called the Statute of Anne gets
22:26
Speaker 1: signed about a hundred years later in England, not in Spain.
22:30
Speaker 1: And so at this point in his life, even if
22:33
Speaker 1: Servants had money to take someone to court, somehow, he
22:36
Speaker 1: didn't have all the pieces that he needed. There wasn't
22:39
Speaker 1: illegal framework. He didn't know the real name of this
22:43
Speaker 1: cheeky author, and even if he could find them, you know,
22:47
Speaker 1: how would he pay legal fees? So instead he went
22:51
Speaker 1: uber petty and I approved because it made for some
22:54
Speaker 1: fantastic literature. That's the thing about the printing press. I mean,
23:02
Speaker 1: it was sort of a double edged sword. Like on
23:04
Speaker 1: the one hand, if you were a writer with something
23:06
Speaker 1: to say and with ideas that that you know, would
23:09
Speaker 1: benefit from a broad audience, you were able to do
23:12
Speaker 1: that for the first time ever as opposed to the
23:14
Speaker 1: oral tradition. Were really so many of those stories had
23:18
Speaker 1: no um ownership attached to them, and they were just
23:21
Speaker 1: passed down and changed, and you know, there was never
23:24
Speaker 1: even this idea of the author as celebrity, right. But
23:27
Speaker 1: on the other hand, it made it a lot easier
23:30
Speaker 1: to make copies of copies, and you know, without any
23:32
Speaker 1: copyright protection and that you know statute of an you
23:35
Speaker 1: were talking about, there was really no protection for people's ideas,
23:40
Speaker 1: and it would be so easy for someone. I mean,
23:43
Speaker 1: I guess the technology was prohibitively expensive, so everyone couldn't
23:46
Speaker 1: own a printing press. Obviously that but that was really
23:49
Speaker 1: the only protection you had if if some you know,
23:52
Speaker 1: scrappy band of you know bootleggers wanted to pitch in
23:57
Speaker 1: together and get a printing press or make one or
23:59
Speaker 1: whatever they could, and they could just copy other popular
24:03
Speaker 1: works and sell them the way people sell bootleg band
24:05
Speaker 1: t shirts outside of the Colosseum. You know, Oh, oh,
24:09
Speaker 1: I got like book leggers, so I love it. No,
24:13
Speaker 1: it's true, and that's absolutely what happened, and so you know,
24:17
Speaker 1: it made servantes much more tuned into what the who
24:22
Speaker 1: the real enemy was, um that it wasn't people copying
24:26
Speaker 1: the stories. It was the printers who just wanted to
24:32
Speaker 1: make money off other people's ideas and they didn't care about, um,
24:35
Speaker 1: you know, robbing these folks who put their heart and
24:37
Speaker 1: soul into these creative works. They just wanted to make
24:40
Speaker 1: a buck. Uh. And again it would have been folks
24:44
Speaker 1: that had money that could afford to start printers that
24:47
Speaker 1: would have been benefiting from this. So he began to
24:51
Speaker 1: actually call out kind of this culture, call out print
24:56
Speaker 1: shop owners who were doing this kind of stuff. Yeah. Yeah, well,
25:00
Speaker 1: Kyhote calls out the printers. He goes to uh, there's spoilers.
25:07
Speaker 1: By the way, there's a scene in the second volume
25:11
Speaker 1: of Don Kyote where the main character goes into a
25:15
Speaker 1: print shop and is astounded by how terrible printers are.
25:21
Speaker 1: He says, they're cheating authors, they're cheating translators. And in
25:26
Speaker 1: the story don Quixote, how how like being John Malkovich
25:31
Speaker 1: is this? In the story don Quixote, don Quixote finds
25:35
Speaker 1: in this print shop an unauthorized version of his actual
25:39
Speaker 1: life and it's been printed while he's standing there, and
25:42
Speaker 1: he's like, come on, guys, and he leaves and this
25:46
Speaker 1: is weird because you know, you think about it, isn't
25:49
Speaker 1: it kind of against Cervantes's interest to take a swing
25:52
Speaker 1: at publishers When they're literally the way he's gonna get paid. Yeah,
25:56
Speaker 1: it's interesting and if you want to read more about
25:58
Speaker 1: this and get a little more into the minutia of
26:00
Speaker 1: this side of the story, highly recommend this article from
26:03
Speaker 1: Smithsonian by Martin Puckner called how a ripped off sequel
26:07
Speaker 1: of Don Quixote predicted piracy in the Digital Age. Uh,
26:12
Speaker 1: it's it's it's the outside the scope I think of
26:14
Speaker 1: this episode, but certainly a really interesting can of worms
26:17
Speaker 1: that was opened there, and and a and a double
26:18
Speaker 1: edged sword. As all technology often is like we see
26:22
Speaker 1: with you know, things like napster and electronic you know,
26:26
Speaker 1: copies of software and cracking things and being able to
26:30
Speaker 1: more or less steal but doesn't feel like stealing was
26:33
Speaker 1: You're not actually stealing it from a human, you know,
26:35
Speaker 1: you are just stealing an idea. So it's a lot
26:38
Speaker 1: easier to justify, right, And I think that was really
26:40
Speaker 1: really predicted that pretty intensely. Yeah, So it's funny because
26:45
Speaker 1: this extends to all media, you know, anybody. I was
26:49
Speaker 1: watching some old like VHS rips earlier, and I remembered
26:53
Speaker 1: with a tinge of nostalgia that FBI warning that pops
26:57
Speaker 1: up like when I saw that as a kid. I
26:59
Speaker 1: took that very seriously. I didn't you know by the
27:02
Speaker 1: time that, uh, that old ad against piracy for movies
27:06
Speaker 1: came out, the one that was like you wouldn't download
27:08
Speaker 1: a car, would you? By the time that came out,
27:11
Speaker 1: I felt like I might download a car if I could.
27:14
Speaker 1: That was the most interesting part of that. P s A.
27:17
Speaker 1: But yeah, you're right. This has such an excellent relevance
27:21
Speaker 1: to today, to the world where we're moving beyond physical
27:25
Speaker 1: media into you know, zeros and ones that you can
27:29
Speaker 1: send back and forth across the world. So hats off,
27:33
Speaker 1: you know, to servants. I wish more people would handle
27:36
Speaker 1: piracy this way. Wouldn't that be, like, I don't know,
27:40
Speaker 1: we don't We don't have as much creative piracy I
27:44
Speaker 1: want to say here in the US, like there's not
27:46
Speaker 1: an unauthorized Avengers coming out Revengers. Well no, no, actually
27:51
Speaker 1: that's not entirely true. Then there's this company called the
27:53
Speaker 1: uh what are they called, um, the Asylum who makes
27:57
Speaker 1: these movies called Mockbusters Streets video guys. So, but they
28:03
Speaker 1: really do genuinely capitalize Back in the days of video
28:07
Speaker 1: stores especially, I guess now in terms of browsing thumbnails
28:10
Speaker 1: of people having brand confusions. So instead of transformers, they've
28:15
Speaker 1: got trans morphers, and instead of snakes on a plane,
28:18
Speaker 1: they've got snakes on a train. And it's just different
28:22
Speaker 1: enough that someone might accidentally rent the wrong one. And
28:25
Speaker 1: these are the folks that are responsible, I believe, for
28:28
Speaker 1: like the Shark Canado movies, or maybe it was like
28:30
Speaker 1: Mega Shark versus Giant Squid or stuff like that, but
28:34
Speaker 1: total schlockmeisters. But that, to me is is a relatively
28:38
Speaker 1: interesting form of plagiarism. Yeah, yeah, especially uh, I can't
28:43
Speaker 1: be the only one who has seen so many of
28:45
Speaker 1: those on Netflix, you know what I mean, They're all
28:47
Speaker 1: over the place. Netflix is very much like the video
28:51
Speaker 1: streaming version of that meme where the parents says we
28:55
Speaker 1: can't eat out, we have food at home, and then
28:57
Speaker 1: you look over at the movie that's food at home
29:00
Speaker 1: and it's like the Revengers or Spirit Slappers, Spirit Slappers.
29:05
Speaker 1: I love it, but yeah, servants, you know uh. He
29:09
Speaker 1: he kind of felt a little burned by all of this,
29:12
Speaker 1: and he was obviously a really smart, witty uh fellow,
29:16
Speaker 1: and he decided to unequivocally kill off his character. I
29:21
Speaker 1: don't want to spoil it too much, because again I
29:24
Speaker 1: haven't read this, and I really want to because this sounds.
29:26
Speaker 1: I didn't realize how kind of trippy and meta the
29:29
Speaker 1: whole thing is, So I'm super looking forward to digging
29:32
Speaker 1: into this for maybe my quarantine reading. Um. But yeah,
29:35
Speaker 1: he he made it. He left no room for there
29:37
Speaker 1: to be a sequel and completely closed the book on
29:43
Speaker 1: on don Quixote closed the book. Totally stole that from
29:47
Speaker 1: a blog post, by the way, so just don't accuse
29:50
Speaker 1: me of plagiarizing nypl dot org slash blog slash slashforth
29:55
Speaker 1: lash slash kse dash falts dash quyhote ridiculou this history. Folks,
30:01
Speaker 1: come for the historical headline, but do please stay for
30:05
Speaker 1: our quarantine crowd work. Uh. You know, there's one interesting
30:09
Speaker 1: theory I think. I think this is a good like
30:12
Speaker 1: speculative note maybe to end on for today. I don't
30:16
Speaker 1: know if you guys have heard this, but we still
30:19
Speaker 1: don't know and we probably never really will know who
30:22
Speaker 1: the author of that unauthorized sequel is. Some historians have
30:28
Speaker 1: argued that it may have been Servantes himself. What yeah,
30:32
Speaker 1: that he may have been having this this weird pr stunt.
30:37
Speaker 1: I don't think that's super likely, but if so, it is, yeah, wow,
30:43
Speaker 1: manufacturing a beef with yourself with a made up version
30:47
Speaker 1: of yourself and then writing it into Oh my god.
30:50
Speaker 1: The more I think about it, but I want to
30:51
Speaker 1: believe that that's true. I don't even care about the evidence.
30:53
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna choose to believe it that's true because
30:56
Speaker 1: that is fantastic. And did Servantas write anything else? Or
30:58
Speaker 1: was he? That was he was kind of one and
31:00
Speaker 1: done guy. He was just so influential with that one
31:03
Speaker 1: work that he just kind of faded out. He wrote
31:05
Speaker 1: a lot of food reviews, uh, and for furniture reviews.
31:10
Speaker 1: Really no, Okay, well, yeah, I would have believed that
31:16
Speaker 1: he did. Uh. He's you know, by far best known
31:19
Speaker 1: for don Quyote, but he wrote a number of other
31:24
Speaker 1: things as well, um, including poems. Uh. He was apparently
31:29
Speaker 1: not a super great poet, kind of like uh Ernest anyway,
31:33
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. His gift was more for prose.
31:35
Speaker 1: I mean, let's be real kind of like n of
31:38
Speaker 1: quote unquote poets. So yeah, tot take there. You gotta
31:42
Speaker 1: be real good to make poetry work. I'm just putting
31:44
Speaker 1: that out there. Oh yeah, yeah, I've often I've often
31:47
Speaker 1: said the same thing. Your your estimation is actually more
31:50
Speaker 1: generous than mine, just to be honest. But when when
31:54
Speaker 1: you get to that ten percent, poetry is amazing. It's
31:58
Speaker 1: just it just so happens that Savantes was not an
32:00
Speaker 1: amazing poet. But he wrote, He wrote farces, he wrote
32:06
Speaker 1: other stories. Uh, he wrote dialogues. Uh. He he was prolific,
32:11
Speaker 1: you know, he was prolific. Uh, he was super petty.
32:14
Speaker 1: I think he and Oscar Wilde would have been great
32:17
Speaker 1: friends until they inevitably, uh fell out over probably over
32:21
Speaker 1: some kind of pun you know. Oh I'm sure. I'm
32:24
Speaker 1: sure it was a punishing beef. No, that's fine, No, No,
32:30
Speaker 1: that was good. People can't see it. But I was nodding,
32:33
Speaker 1: You were nodding and I and I was nodding at
32:35
Speaker 1: your last quip as well. Ben So, I just don't
32:36
Speaker 1: want anybody to think that we don't have each other's
32:38
Speaker 1: backs here with our bad humor. Um. But yeah, this
32:42
Speaker 1: is a great story, man. And the thing is that
32:44
Speaker 1: really leads me to believe that maybe it really was him,
32:47
Speaker 1: that it was just like a like elaborate publicity stunt. No,
32:51
Speaker 1: one would have even known about this in history if
32:53
Speaker 1: it hadn't have been for him making such a to
32:55
Speaker 1: do about it and writing it in to his own
32:57
Speaker 1: work and name dropping you know every turn. Uh. So,
33:02
Speaker 1: really hats off to him for not only you know,
33:05
Speaker 1: having the most clever way of responding to kind of
33:08
Speaker 1: being ripped off, but for like kind of also big
33:12
Speaker 1: upping the rip offer and sort of like making him
33:15
Speaker 1: kind of stand the test of time and and and
33:17
Speaker 1: have schmucks like us talking about Yeah, that's a good point.
33:20
Speaker 1: It's kind of like to go back to the disk
33:23
Speaker 1: mixtape example. One thing that a lot of celebrities in
33:27
Speaker 1: the world of hip hop do is is gained notoriety
33:31
Speaker 1: and attention by sort of manufacturing conflicts. You know. And
33:34
Speaker 1: if you're an up and coming MC, for a long time,
33:37
Speaker 1: the best path to success was to uh, was to
33:41
Speaker 1: insult an established rapper and then have them mention you
33:46
Speaker 1: on their album because that's so much free publicity. So
33:50
Speaker 1: I'm with you there. No, I would also like to
33:52
Speaker 1: believe that Cervantes did this entire thing himself. I don't
33:58
Speaker 1: know if it's true, but boy I I wish it was. Uh.
34:02
Speaker 1: This brings our tail for today to a close. What
34:07
Speaker 1: do what do you think? Folks? Let us know. Do
34:09
Speaker 1: you think Cervantes kind of ran a coln on everybody
34:14
Speaker 1: in the literary world of the time, or do you
34:17
Speaker 1: think that he really was responding sincerely to a counterfeiting attempt. Yeah,
34:22
Speaker 1: let us know what you think. You can write to
34:23
Speaker 1: us at Ridiculous at iHeart radio dot com. You can
34:26
Speaker 1: check us out on Facebook and please do join our
34:28
Speaker 1: Facebook group, the Ridiculous Historians, where there's always a good
34:32
Speaker 1: memory and chit chat to be had and and and
34:35
Speaker 1: Ben and I will occasionally lurk in there and pop
34:38
Speaker 1: into the comments from time to time, So all you
34:41
Speaker 1: have to do to get in is name one of
34:43
Speaker 1: the three of us, or just say something humorous or
34:47
Speaker 1: let us know that you you know, actually, uh, listen
34:49
Speaker 1: to the show and aren't a Russian bought like Gabe Luisier.
34:52
Speaker 1: I'm just kidding. We've established the US in fact real person. Uh.
34:55
Speaker 1: Big thanks to him, our research associate extraordinaire who will
34:57
Speaker 1: be appearing on the show very soon. Huge thanks to
35:01
Speaker 1: super producer Casey Pegram Alex Williams who composed our theme,
35:05
Speaker 1: and as always, thank you to another character you can
35:08
Speaker 1: see lurking around our Facebook page Ridiculous Historians, the one
35:12
Speaker 1: and only Jonathan Strickland, a k a. The Quister. Uh
35:17
Speaker 1: if you if you summon him, he might show up,
35:19
Speaker 1: But then again, we may show up too. We also
35:21
Speaker 1: want to thank as always Eve's Jeff Cope. Shout out
35:25
Speaker 1: to Cheryl Crow. Glad we glad we squashed that beef. Uh.
35:29
Speaker 1: Shout out to uh Cervantes himself. Shout out to Don
35:33
Speaker 1: Quixote and no thanks and shout out to you. We'll
35:36
Speaker 1: see you next Sundflix. For more podcasts for my Heart Radio,
35:45
Speaker 1: visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
35:48
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows