Reading in the Time of Monsters 004: Toole, "A Confederacy of Dunces"

I thought I would break things up a little and talk about a book I like. More than — or maybe just along with — being a really funny novel that everyone from high schoolers on up read and enjoy, “A Confederacy of Dunces” says more about more “serious” matters than a lot of your supposedly serious literature, and more elegantly as well. While for the most part people either love the book or just ignore it, every now and again tiresome establishment literature hacks try to take Toole down a few pegs, posthumously. One such was cokehead litterateur Tom Bissell. You can find my YouTube video rebuking Tom Bissell’s lousy hack job on “A Confederacy of Dunces” here. But here, I’m going to “accentuate the positive,” as they say.

The audio quality is bad. Sorry. I might look into getting a better mic and/or not recording on Substack’s little recording modality.