FINISHED

Okay I have finally finished "A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES" by John Kennedy Toole. This man's real life is so tragic I wonder if this account was somewhat biographical. I am sure he changed it up just a bit, but here is a man who writes a novel, cannot get anyone to read it, puts it into a box and hides it away, then at the age of thirty-two kills himself, his mother finds the manuscript and forces someone to read it and it is published. Now if we look at Ignatius, we find a man who lives with his mother, writes pages and pages of documents explaining his theories and thoughts, who believes that he has great writings which no one will understand, a mother who nags him continuously and does not understand him and who he does not want to see his work, who is on the verge of being put into a insane asylum when he is rescued by a woman he would sooner kill. Ignatius is in his 30's living with his mother, I am not sure that Mr. Toole had the same fate. So it is viewed as a comedy and there are parts that make you want to laugh, but maybe I should have not read about Mr. Toole before reading the book because Ignatius character makes me kind of sad. I think that I relate with the mom in that she wants her son to do well, move out of the house and make something of his education. I would hope that my son would not want live independently. However, unlike the mom I do not drink and bemoan my fate. I am thinking that Ignatius may have had Asperger's syndrome, the reason I say this is that I know some children that have had this and they did not like being touched, they did not like to get their hands dirty and they just burst forth with statements that maybe other people would keep to themselves. So once again I do not find the character funny, but the predicaments he gets himself into that is another story. The whole book is filled with desperate characters trying to make a life for themselves, so as in life some of these failings can be amusing. I agree with the Walker Percy, who wrote the forward in my book, you have make your way into the book in order to become invested into it. I had to hit the halfway mark in order to want to finish the book. I could why it may have been a hard sell, if the publisher only read the first chapter or two. IT gets better, would I put it on my top 100 list -no.