Dearest dunce...

I think what had kept me from reading John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces for so long was that it was marketed (not necessarily by the publisher, but by well-meaning book pushers I've come across) as a comedy, and, worse yet, as a hippie comedy (I have trouble with poetry in LP liner notes, too). But I was finally pressured and cajoled into reading Dunces, and, having tested it on Rachel first, dove in, thank God.

And it was rewarding, in a dark, bitter way. Like Milky Way Midnight bars.

It's true that portly protagonist Ignatius finds solace in the words of Boethius, and it's true that his incredibly allusive and quasi-scholarly inner world lends depth and meaning to his daily life. But constantly the heart breaks upon realizing that it all depends on maintaining the self-delusion -- maybe the philosophy of the Consolation is just a mind fuck. Because, finally and unfortunately, I think the reader must in good conscience not only include Ignatius among the world's dunces, but must also, perhaps, accept him as the dearest and dunciest of them all.