Literary scholars recently seem to think they’ve invented a new genre: weird literature. It’s partly an outgrowth of the increased popularity of science fiction, dystopic fiction and zombie stories–that sort of thing. Scholars also point to the restitution of the writing of HP Lovecroft (USA, 1890-1937), which seems to define this genre. I don’t have a problem with any of this (having been asked to contribute to a volume on the subject), but it’s worth pointing out that weirdness in narrative is nothing new, dating back at least to Cervantes’s Don Quixote, credited with kickstarting the modern novel in 1605. Don Quixote’s problem (the character’s “real” name was Alonso Quijano) was his inability to disentangle reality from fiction and his insistence on attacking the world as if it were an adventure tale from the chivalric tradition of “knight errantry.”