I cannot recall the last time I read something so incredibly laugh-out-loud funny. John Kennedy Toole's "A Confederacy of Dunces" is an absolute masterpiece. While reading it, I could barely believe that I hadn't read it already or that no one had told me I should drop everything else and read this. 

I clearly have no educated friends  - Ignatius would probably say. 

"Dunces" is the story of Ignatius J. Riley, a lazy, fat, bumbling baffoon gifted with an exceptionally critical eye for all but himself. Armed with incredible battery of snark, Ignatius is the perfect pompous ass, a classic arrogant, condescending prick with an opinion on everything and an advice for everyone - in short - a personification of your average Twitter user. 

Ignatius is a complete failure by all practical accounts. He lives with his harried mother whom he continually harasses. He cannot keep his mouth and cannot stay out of trouble. The fact that Ignatius has so little to warrant his outsized arrogance is what makes the book really work. Every insult coming from his mouth is a source of pure humor. You laugh with him while laughing at him.

The book is clearly the work of a genius, so clearly ahead of his time. No wonder the world largely rejected it and its author. Great works of comedy are often marked with an undercurrent of tragedy and there is none so absolute as the one attached to this novel. The novel was published posthumously as Toole killed himself out of severe depression resulting from an inability to get the book published. The book was finally published, thanks to Toole's mother, in 1980, 11 years after Toole's suicide and went on to win the Pulitzer prize for fiction in 1981. It is now, as I've learned, widely regarded as a canonical work of modern literature.

Who would want to live in a world where a book like this wouldn't get published, I don't know. Not me. And neither should you. Drop everything and grab this book. 

The book is brimming with tasty one-liners and here is an introductory sampling...