A Confederacy of Dunces: A masterpiece of incomparable comic wit

I cannot recall the last time I read something so incredibly laugh-out-loud funny. John Kennedy Toole's "A Confederacy of Dunces" is an absolute masterpiece. While reading it, I could barely believe that I hadn't read it already or that no one had told me I should drop everything else and read this. 

I clearly have no educated friends  - Ignatius would probably say. 

"Dunces" is the story of Ignatius J. Riley, a lazy, fat, bumbling baffoon gifted with an exceptionally critical eye for all but himself. Armed with incredible battery of snark, Ignatius is the perfect pompous ass, a classic arrogant, condescending prick with an opinion on everything and an advice for everyone - in short - a personification of your average Twitter user. 

Ignatius is a complete failure by all practical accounts. He lives with his harried mother whom he continually harasses. He cannot keep his mouth and cannot stay out of trouble. The fact that Ignatius has so little to warrant his outsized arrogance is what makes the book really work. Every insult coming from his mouth is a source of pure humor. You laugh with him while laughing at him.

The book is clearly the work of a genius, so clearly ahead of his time. No wonder the world largely rejected it and its author. Great works of comedy are often marked with an undercurrent of tragedy and there is none so absolute as the one attached to this novel. The novel was published posthumously as Toole killed himself out of severe depression resulting from an inability to get the book published. The book was finally published, thanks to Toole's mother, in 1980, 11 years after Toole's suicide and went on to win the Pulitzer prize for fiction in 1981. It is now, as I've learned, widely regarded as a canonical work of modern literature.

Who would want to live in a world where a book like this wouldn't get published, I don't know. Not me. And neither should you. Drop everything and grab this book. 

The book is brimming with tasty one-liners and here is an introductory sampling...

“Apparently I lack some particular perversion which today’s employer is seeking.”

“Employers sense in me a denial of their values … they fear me. I suspect that they can see that I am forced to function in a century which i loathe.”

“you can always tell employees of the government by the total vacancy which occupies the space where most other people have faces.”

“What I want is a good, strong monarchy with a tasteful and decent king who has some knowledge of theology and geometry and to cultivate a Rich Inner Life.”

“I am at the moment writing a lengthy indictment against our century. When my brain begins to reel from my literary labors, I make an occasional cheese dip.”

“Stop!’ I cried imploringly to my god-like mind.”

“I mingle with my peers or no one, and since I have no peers, I mingle with no one.”

“In my private apocalypse he will be impaled upon his own nightstick.”

“Possession of anything new or expensive only reflected a person’s lack of theology and geometry; it could even cast doubts upon one’s soul.”

“Had you ‘artists’ had a part in the decoration of the Sistine Chapel, it would have ended up looking like a particularly vulgar train terminal”

“I would very much like to know what the Founding Fathers would say if they could see these children being debauched to further the cause of Clearasil”

“My corps of attorneys will contact you in the morning wherever it is that you carry on your questionable activities. I shall warn them beforehand that they may expect to see and hear anything. They are all brilliant attorneys, pillars of the community, aristocratic Creole scholars whose knowledge of the more surreptitious forms of living is quite limited. They may even refuse to see you. A considerably lesser representative may be sent to call upon you, some junior partner whom they’ve taken in out of pity.”

“Having once been so high, humanity fell so low. What had once been dedicated to the soul was now dedicated to the sale.”