Was Cervantes prompted to write Part 2 of Don Quixote thanks to Avellaneda?

Online I have often come across the suggestion that it was thanks to the fake Part 2 by Alonso Fernández de Avellaneda that Cervantes started writing his own Part 2. I’ve just come across that idea again in Martin Puchner’s The Written World. 

I can tell you with certainty that that’s not the case.

Part 1 of Don Quixote was published in 1605. Avellaneda’s fake Part 2 came out in 1614, then Cervantes’s Part 2 came out in 1615. 

In the Prologue of Exemplary Novels, Cervantes wrote “first you will see, and soon, the continuation of the deeds of Don Quixote and the delights of Sancho Panza.” He published Exemplary Novels in 1613.

This is why Cervantes didn’t mention Avellaneda until chapter 59, then for the rest of the book (73 chapters in total), constantly took a dig at it. 

PS: I love Cervantes’s wit. The constant digs at Avellaneda in Part 2 are hilarious. But I also like his Hitchcock-style cameos in Part 1. When the priest and the barber go through Don Quixote’s books with the intention of burning them, for example, they come across “La Galatea by Miguel de Cervantes”. Hmm, I wonder who that is.

The priest says: 

“For many years that Cervantes has been a great friend of mine, and I know that he’s more versed in misfortunes than verses. His book has some originality—he proposes something but concludes nothing. We have to wait for the second part that he promises. Maybe after he does his penance, he’ll receive the compassion that has been denied him so far. While we wait for this to happen, keep it in seclusion at your house, señor compadre.” (P.1, ch.6)  

Later, when the captive tells his tale:

“The only one who fared well with him was a Spanish soldier named So-and-So de Saavedra, whom he never beat, nor had beaten, nor said a harsh word to, even though the Spaniard did things that will stick in people’s memory for many years—and all of them to attain freedom—and for the least of the many things he did, all of us were fearful that he would be impaled, and he feared it himself more than once. If time permitted, I’d say things now that this soldier did that would interest and astonish you much more than the narration of my own story…” (P.1, ch.40) 

*cough* Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra *cough*.  

I should perhaps pick up a Cervantes biography. His life seems fascinating. Does anyone know any good one? 

PPS: The chapter about Don Quixote in The Written World is not very good. Martin Puchner does give you some useful information about piracy (literal and figurative) and printing, but his reading of Don Quixote is rather superficial. Cervantes may have started out writing a book to kill all chivalry romances, featuring a man driven mad by reading, but such a book it does not remain—does Puchner think the author actually agreed with the book burning?—Cervantes complicated things and added different layers just in Part 1, and Part 2 was greater, more complex and profound.

I also don’t like that Puchner writes about the lack of copyright and the fake Don Quixote, but doesn’t talk about the brilliance of Cervantes’s response to Avellaneda. I mean he briefly mentions it, but doesn’t talk about its brilliance. He also doesn’t talk about the meta aspect of Part 2, which gives Don Quixote the reputation as “the first postmodern novel”.