Monday, December 11, 2006

A Confederacy of Dunces

I finally finished John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces. It's a hilarious book and I recommend it to anyone who enjoys reading. It wasn't published until 1980, after Toole's suicide in 1969. It won the Pulitzer in 1981. There are tons of hilarious excerpts that I would love to put in here, but I can't find any online and don't want to fish back through the book. So I'll just give you the quote that is the book's epigraph:

"When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him." - Jonathon Swift


So if you feel that you are constantly surrounded by a bunch of morons, it could mean that you are a genius. Or one of my co-workers.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

My brother read it years ago when it was out of print. I guess he had to special order it. He tried to get me to read it, and I made it through a chapter or two before I got bored with it.

Earlier this year, I finally read it all the way through. I know some people who are obsessive about it. I thought it was pretty good, but I didn't think it was great.

I thought he did a great job with the characters. Each one had a definite personality and distinctive speech.

As much as Ignatius disdained technology, think of what he would have done with a blog. I imagine it would be flamewars without end. LOL.