Well, this is why I got into this mess in the first place: to read the giants of western literature. And no matter who you are, there is little doubt that Miguel de Cervantes' Don Quixote is a qualifying entry. Four-hundred years old, and inspiring more art and interpretations than any single work I know of, this is a book to be handled with due reverence. Despite the age and the shadow it casts, however, the first handful of pages contains much for a 21st century reader to consider.

Right from the "Preface to the Reader," Cervantes makes no effort to hide the fact that his book is going to "ridicule the absurdity of those books of chivalry." His approach, though, is somewhat tongue in cheek, and really pretty sophisticated for the 15th century. Rather than a simple bashing of medieval romances, the reader is presented with Don Quixote, "the most virtuous and valiant knight who had appeared for many years." Quixote, of course, is nothing of the kind, but Cervantes as narrator tells the story as though his hero's madness were perfectly reasonable in a chivalric knight, and therein may lie his harshest critique.

More than anything, Don Quixote seems less like a comic figure than he does a tragic one.   In the countless manifestations of the character I've run into over the years, he has always come off as a bit of a loony. What strikes me as sad is the isolation which seems to have driven him to his outlandish ways. Cervantes tells the reader that Quixote (whose real name is Quixada) spent all his leisure time reading chivalric tales. A man of landed wealth, he has no friends, no other occupations to fill up his time but reading. As much as I love books, his life seems to have an unwritten loneliness in it before he sets off as a knight-errant. In his seclusion, I don't think it is a far leap to read our man of la Mancha in a modern context.

How often have you heard it discussed that the modern American, despite our society's connectivity, is more isolated now than ever? I know I have heard it talked to death, and yet cannot deny the truth of it. The Internet gives us access to more information than has ever been possible in the history of mankind. We can instantly trade ideas with people continents away. Documents pass through it.  Whole books are digitized, encoded and whisked out for mass consumption. Social networking sites are on the verge of becoming institutional. You can even live a Second Life in a virtual world, with a virtual you. It's all part and parcel of the digital world we live in, but is it any different from crazy old Quixada locking himself up in his closet and reading endless stories?

It seems to me that the more dependent we become on modern technology for our entertainment and communication, the more we risk becoming a society of Don Quixotes. Yes, social sites let us stay in contact with people, no matter where they are, but we have to sit at the computer to make it happen. We ignore face to face conversations with our neighbors in favor of people we may never actually see again. Like Quixote, we lose ourselves in a world of words and images of far off places, sacrificing the immediacy of our present lives. Like Quixote, we can take on false names and fake faces, becoming avatars of ourselves in an effort to be greater than our circumstances. And, like Quixote, it never comes off quite like we imagined.