![]() The large, unwieldy, hilarious novel is made 1,000 times more poignant by knowledge that its author died believing it, and himself, a failure. One should never approach such a tome without having experienced some loss, some sorrow of one’s own. ![]() As I watched and listened, I remember thinking to myself: “As soon as I’m old enough, I’m going to read that damn book.”īy the time I was old enough for A Confederacy of Dunces, my stepmother was no longer related to me by marriage, and I rarely saw those delightful women I had once called my aunts. I could hear my aunt’s echoing cackle coming down the phone line. And then my stepmom would share a passage herself, only she would have to take breaks from reading out loud to allow her fits of giggles to pass. ![]() ![]() My stepmother would listen as one of her sisters read her a passage from the book and then she would laugh and laugh. But I would stand nearby and listen to my glamorous young stepmother as she talked on the phone to any one of her sisters-she had a gaggle of them, my glorious new aunties, and it seemed they were all reading A Confederacy of Dunces, too. I also didn’t know the sad tale of this most hilarious novel and its author. I was five years old, and didn’t know how to read yet. That must have been about when my stepmother started reading the book. ![]() In 1981, A Confederacy of Dunces by the late John Kennedy Toole won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction-a rare honor for a work of humor. ![]()
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