A long joke can be funny and then become serious. One long joke in history was written by Miguel de Cervantes in 17th-century Spain: I am talking, of course, of Don Quixote, a novel of more than one thousand pages.

Laughing at Don Quixote has been commonplace for centuries. He is a hidalgo, a low-ranking nobleman who goes crazy because he reads too many chivalric romances. The romances so influence him that he decides to act like their knightly