Don Quijote was a brilliant satire on the Quest Novel and its stereotyped hero. Stereotyped at that timer with such overblown things as Amadis De Gaula etc. But he really was on a quest, and that's what makes the book more than just a satire.
Quest novels are wonderful in that they always invovlve those who help us and those who hinder us, and the heroes' ability to distinguish.
Even the Wizard of Oz is a quest novel. There ar einfinite variations.
But thehero/heroine must set out from home -- either forced to or voluntarily --- there has to be a treasured goal, and an animal companion.
I used t wonder what the animal companion was in Old Man and the Sea but then realized it was the old man's memory of the lions on the beaches of Africa.
And at present I am reading Patrick O'Brian --- all the Aubrey-Maturin novels. I'm addicted.
"Cities of the Plain" is actually the name of the trilogy, of which I think "All the Pretty Horses" was the best. Strange that I finally discovered McCarthy, years after my BA in English! The thing about this trilogy that absolutely floored me, though, is his capture of the American (post) frontier in spare and beautiful language, which sends the spirit soaring.