One book

Gregory Alan Bolcer (gbolcer@gambetta.ICS.uci.edu)
Thu, 20 Aug 1998 08:25:04 -0700


I know this is a stale subject and I've been
prone to ligheweight content, overposting, but
if you could read one book, I recommend
John Kennedy Toole's 'A Confederacy of Dunces'.
It is a mix of high and low comedy and
can be summed up aby the quote at the beginning
of the book:

When a true genius appears in the world,
you may know him by this sign, that the dunces
are all in a confederacy against him.
Johnathan Swift--
"Thoughts on Various Subjects,
Moral and Diverting"

Greg

p.s. My other choices are Catcher in the Rye and
Short Timers. Short Timers is 180 pages so you can read
it 4 or 5 times and still not get all the correlations.
Catcher in the Rye is supposed to present an analogy about
man's desire to return to the womb, Short Timer's is supposed
to be about the infantilization of grown adults into
children in order to re-mature them into soldiers.

p.p.s. Speaking of hard to read books, has anyone ever
finished Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow? Can somebody please
explain it to me?