Posted on 05/28/2020 8:06:08 AM PDT by billorites
Toole so brilliantly captured a sense of time and place—New Orleans in the early ‘60s—that when I finished the book, I wished that Toole had written a sequel, with Ignatius and Myrna in New York in the mid ‘60s. It would be a natural follow-up.
As much as I like Dunces, I like even more the Jeeves and Wooster books by P. G. Wodehouse, the wittiest writer of the 20th century.
As much as I like Dunces, I like even more the Jeeves and Wooster books by P. G. Wodehouse, the wittiest writer of the 20th century.
I find it mildly witty/droll, but nothing for the ages.
I realize we all have different funny bones. I am just amazed at the unrestrained praise so many people give the book, something which indicates a lack of my own understanding. So many people LOVE the book and describe it as the most hilarious thing they have ever read (my best friend for many years felt this way). I just don’t get it, which is my fault.
I LOVE those books and totally agree, Wodehouse is the wittiest writer of the 20th century (and many others).
Who else could write so many stories that include getting accidentally engaged in such a hilarious way?
bump
I read it many years ago while on deployment to some godforsaken foreign location and it was the best,funniest thing I had ever read up to that time, so I read it again! Now I need to find the book and read it at least one more time.
In my undergrad days I had a professor who knew the author personally and met the people who were the basis for some of the characters (he met the woman who was the basis for Santa Battaglia.)
He regaled the class with anecdotes about the author and the characters.
That class was a hoot.
I’m also fond of Wodehouse’s lesser-known Ukridge stories.
Oh wow, you are right - he’d be perfect for the role! I read the book a few years ago and really enjoyed it.
I’ll take your advice! Cheers.
I’d have liked to see Zero Mostel play Reilly.
Take some unusually perceptive and profoundly literate Catholics, and stick them in the Deep South for an extended period of time, and you get some truly unique literature - see Walker Percy, Flannery O’Connor, and John Kennedy Toole. They remain to this day among my very favorite writers.
And the point about the impossibility of filming “Confederacy” is telling - other literary works that have been considered impossible to put on the screen (or at least to do so well) include “Catcher in the Rye”, “Don Quixote” and “Tristram Shandy” - and what I like about the last one of those is somebody actually made a movie about the folly of trying to make that Tristram Shandy movie.
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