لعنتی
این دیگر چه جور کتابی است...تا به حال این همه از یک کتاب متنفر نبوده ام و این همه خودم را مجبور حس نکرده ام که انصاف را رعایت کنم و بهش پنج تمام بدهم.
در مقدمه کتاب مترجم می گوید اثر کمدی است و در پشت جلد محبوبیتش را با ناطور دشت قابل مقایسه می داند. خود کتاب نه کمدی است نه جالب!!!!!!! (احتمالن طنز موجود در موقعیت و کلام در حین ترجمه از بین رفته است). در کل داستان کشش چندانی ندارد. نه اوج و فرود خاصی نه اتفاق جالبی. ایگنیشس تهوع آورترین قهرمان قصه ای است که تا به حال دیده ام. مردک چاق بی شعوری که همه ی کارهایش روی اعصاب است. منتها کلید قصه در دست اوست. ایگنیشس یک شخص خاص نیست . بیشتر یک وضعیت روانی است که گاهی انسان ها بالاخص از نوع باهوشش دچار آن میشوند و خود آگاه از چرخه واقعیت خارج شده و غرق توهمات خود می شوند. شاید بتوان گفت جاهایی کتاب مثل آینه بو�� برایم. گاهی حس می کردم دقیقن به همان اندازه ایگنیشس مشمئز کننده زندگی می کنم و بی خیال واقعیت دور و برم گرفتار بیگ چیف نوشتنم. این تصویر وحشتناک بود. و شاید دلیل معرکه بودن کتاب هم همین باشد....و همین مجبورم کرد که بهش پنج بدهم.

فروردین 93

It’s been many years since I initially read John Kennedy Toole (✝) and his tribute to Ignatius in New Orleans. One scene in particular is the protest with stained bed linens. Toole thoroughly engaged the senses of his audience with Ignatius' copious odor of his body (smells like “old tea bags”), his decrepit banner, or his fiery flatus. Etiology of IBS is left to the reconciliation by reader.

Apparently this—gas—was a quotidian gift to those in his world. His gastrointestinal problems were not ones hidden, yet became the guidon of his existence. Challenging for many to relate to such a character living a life beyond that of common imagination. Some describe Ignatius as bipolar and others as a slug, satisfied with a rather pedestrian existence who happens to be messy too.

“You could tell by the way he talked, though, that he had gone to school a long time. That was probably what was wrong with him.”
---John Kennedy Toole

“A Confederacy of Dunces” is a long comedic tale that surprisingly evaded the censors of its day. Character Ignatius has lots in common with his author/creator. Toole often complains of his Mother’s constant insults (to his Editor) and this story is one bringing a justice to a battered man trapped in the tortured mind of an boy. John Kennedy Toole committed suicide. His book was published 11 years after his death. A Confederacy of Dunces is a Pulitzer Prize/PEN/Faulkner winner for fiction—awarded posthumously. He worked as an English Professor in the US Army (1961). Buy.

Side-Splittingly Funny Literary Novel: Ample Abderian Tomfoolery
The Big Easy's Mensa Motley Fool, its Baissière Barbare

oh boy oh boy oh boy...

When I first picked this up, it seemed too odd. Hell, the cover illustration shows this to be grotesque humour. I put it down not to pick back up for more than a year at which point I decided to read up to page 75.

What followed was not at all grotesque or surreal humor, but instead the funniest literary novel I've ever read. I LOVED IT. The 2016 Man Booker/Book Critics' Circle winner, The Sellout, is almost as funny at times. For my money though, no one holds a candle to Ignatius J. Reilly as the funniest character in a literary novel.

It's hard to describe the novel or Ignatius with sufficient detail to justify/explain the hilarity. The author John Kennedy Toole, a tortured soul, was posthumously awarded the Pulitzer Prize 12 years after his 1969 suicide at the age of 31.

My best stab at a description of Ignatius is a brilliant bigoted buffoon in New Orleans (the Big Easy), and to give some quotes, though they are much funnier when read in context:

n  Ignatius: “I suspect that beneath your offensively and vulgarly effeminate façade there may be a soul of sorts. Have you read widely in Boethius?"

N.O. Denizen: "Who? Oh, heavens no. I never even read newspapers."

Ignatius: "Then you must begin a reading program immediately so that you may understand the crises of our age," Ignatius said solemnly. "Begin with the late Romans, including Boethius, of course. Then you should dip rather extensively into early Medieval. You may skip the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. That is mostly dangerous propaganda. Now that I think of it, you had better skip the Romantics and the Victorians, too. For the contemporary period, you should study some selected comic books."

Denizen: "You're fantastic."

Ignatius: "I recommend Batman especially, for he tends to transcend the abysmal society in which he's found himself. His morality is rather rigid, also. I rather respect Batman.”n

****

n  Mother Reilly: “It smells terrible in here.'

Ignatius: "Well, what do you expect? The human body, when confined, produces certain odors which we tend to forget in this age of deodorants and other perversions. Actually, I find the atmosphere of this room rather comforting. Schiller needed the scent of apples rotting in his desk in order to write. I, too, have my needs. You may remember that Mark Twain preferred to lie supinely in bed while composing those rather dated and boring efforts which contemporary scholars try to prove meaningful. Veneration of Mark Twain is one of the roots of our current intellectual stalemate.” n

I recommend this winner of the 1981 Pulitzer Prize if you enjoy high-brow humour involving friends in low places.

تابستون شروع به خوندنش کردم و کمتر از صد صفحشو تونستم بخونم. واقعا خسته کننده بود.رهاش کردم. دیروز با خودم گفتم هرطوری که شده تمومش میکنم. بالاخره تموم شد. تا اواخر کتاب میخواستم سه ستاره بهش بدم. اونم بخاطر قلم و توصیفات دقیق و بی نظیرش. ولی هرطوری حساب میکردم نمیشد به این همه داستان موازی بی سر و ته و این همه شخصیت های متفاوتی که توی داستان سر در گمن، امتیاز بیشتری داد. دو فصل آخر کتاب کاملا نظرمو عوض کرد. به طرز عجیبی اون همه داستان به ظاهر بی سر و ته رو به هم ربط داد و پایان خوبی هم واسه هر کدوم در نظر گرفت. واقعا فکرشو نمیکردم.
درمورد داستان کتاب واقعا نمیدونم چی بگم. جز اینکه ایگنیشس از اون شخصیتاییه که هیچ وقت فراموشش نمیکنم. یه شخصیت بی اندازه چندش آور و حال به هم زن و رو اعصاب که اواخر داستان رقت انگیز و حتی گاهی دوست داشتنی بنظر میرسه!
نویسنده قبل از مرگش عجب شاهکاری نوشته. کتاب خیلی خوبی که البته خیلی دوست داشتنی نیست!
95/11/15

"Suddenly Mrs. Reilly remembered the horrible night that she and Mr. Reilly had gone to the Prytania to see Clark Gable and Jean Harlow in Red Dust. In the heat and confusion that had followed their return home, nice Mr. Reilly had tried one of his indirect approaches, and Ignatius was conceived. Poor Mr. Reilly. He had never gone to another movie as long as he lived."

Thus began the life of Ignatius Reilly, a Promethian character, the type of which has existed in abundance throughout the history of New Orleans. I can think of no other book that has kept me in such a perpetual state of smiling and laughing, even through the dramatic, emotional conclusion.

Set in the 1960s, the human menagerie created by Toole somehow still accurately portrays a spectrum of character types that populate the city. Ignatius’s well-meaning but clueless mother, Irene, and her new friend Santa Battaglia speak the dialect that has come to mark the older, working class generations. Jones and his vulgarly profound observations about the people around him can still be heard in Black neighborhoods surrounding the French Quarter.

Even the clueless, inherited wealth and sense of privilege that Mr. and Mrs. Levy represent is not out of place today. The flamboyant Damian Green's (whose Midwestern family is only too happy to send him money in New Orleans to stay out of their community’s sight) gay friends and his butch lesbian tenants can be found eternally in the far side of the French Quarter, along with the strip joints and the Lucky Dog vendors on Bourbon Street. Old, cranky Miss Trixie, who admires Ignatius, or as she calls him, Gloria, somehow never quite figures out the line between delusion and reality, which in its own way, sums up New Orleans as perfectly as can be imagined. And as an added comic irony, policeman Angelo Mancuso, with his saint-like, honest devotion to duty, stands out like a beacon in a city that is notoriously famous for corruption.

Kept together by the messy glue of Ignatius’s daily exploits, Toole wrote a story for the ages. The great tragedy is that he never knew it and died by suicide before he might have created even more memorable stories. But at least in this novel, he has forged a timeless and comically brilliant story which only gets better upon multiple re-readings. Ultimately this is a tale about many differing members of a community who are convinced that they live in the center of the universe and can’t understand why anyone would want to be anywhere else. I think it is best summed up in Irene Reilly’s exchange with her new beau, Claude Robichaux:n  

“'What you think about somebody wants peace, Claude?'
'That sounds like a communiss to me.'
Mrs. Reilly’s worst fears were realized."

nThat fear of foreign influence is as New Orleanian as it gets.

First Review:

As an expatriate New Orleanian, nothing brings back the voices of home like this book. Toole wrote the New Orleans accent better than anyone before or since. He described the quintessential New Orleans quirkiness and angst in a timeless way. This book is perfection.

I think many of the negative comments are from people who have never been to New Orleans. Nor have they ever heard the accent--which is in no way Southern.

This is one of the few books I make a point of re-reading every few years.

Laugh out loud,great fun. This mans obnoxious attitude and spoiled ways just have to be loved.the way he rants on and justifies his behaviour is nothing short of absolute hilarity. I love this book.i will read again and again. His sence of humour is 5 stars and the other character's are just as good and fun to read about.

This so-called "farce" and "classic" was more frustrating to me than entertaining. I dislike leaving a book unfinished and the only reason I continued to read it was the hope that my effort would be paid off in the end. Alas, no such reward awaited me. This further cemented my belief that the only reason classics are called so is because some committee agreed and the public thought the committee must be right. I'm afraid my lingering disillusion with this book prevents my ability to form any more specific of an analysis. I cannot even remember the name of the one character I halfway liked in the entire book. 50 million Elvis fans can indeed be wrong.

“You could tell by the way he talked, though, that he had gone to school a long time. That was probably what was wrong with him.”

John Kennedy Toole had committed suicide over a decade before this book had eventually been published, and thereafter won a posthumous Pulitzer. This book is one of the rare ones that made me laugh at every turn of a page. The dark comedy and the constant ridicule of American consumerism make it equally thought-provoking and hilarious. There were so many times I guffawed and then transitioned into a sad smile on reflecting on how the absurdity of the passages hold true in the modern world (especially with the Trump administration in power).

Reread.

"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.”
-- Jonathan Swift

Satire – 1. a literary work holding up human vices and follies to ridicule or scorn; 2. trenchant wit, irony, or sarcasm used to expose and discredit vice or folly
-- Merriam-Webster Dictionary

“Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face, but their own.”
-- Jonathan Swift


Let’s see. How can I describe Ignatius J. Reilly? He is a thirty-year old man with two college degrees who lives with his mother. He is obese, eccentric, bombastic, arrogant, slothful, caustic, acerbic, insensitive, and misanthropic. He lacks self-awareness to the point of combining ascetic medieval values with undisciplined gluttony.

He is a modern day Don Quixote in a green hunting cap, who roams the streets of New Orleans tilting at windmills while trying to correct wrongs, as he sees them of course, just like the Man from La Mancha. Both had become mentally and psychologically trapped in the past and were out of step with the societies in which they lived.

Don Quixote found himself in such a circumstance because his mind had become addled from reading too many medieval stories about chivalrous knights roaming about the countryside righting wrongs. Ignatius’ entrapment, on the other hand, occurred because he studied medieval history and philosophy in college. (I first thought he had majored in medieval history, but when I looked again I found that no major is given. He, however, does declare himself to be a medievalist. I think he probably majored in philosophy.)

Due to his reading, Ignatius hates everything – and I mean everything – about the modern world, but refuses to confront his own shortcomings and failures. As a result, chaos is the general result of his misguided efforts to right what in some cases are actual social injustices. Unfortunately, his ideas and methods are too grandiose to accomplish his objectives.

When he is forced to take a job with Levy Pants as a file clerk he first streamlines the job by emptying files into a waste basket. He then proceeds to attempt to organize the exploited workers in the factory. Since they are mostly black he labels his effort the “Crusade for Moorish Dignity.” The crusade is short-lived.

While selling hot dogs out of a push cart for Paradise Vendors (and consuming most of the product, the price of which is subtracted from his wages by his employer, leaving him only a few coins to take home to his mother) he attempts to organize New Orleans’ gay community. This crusade he names “Save the World through Degeneracy.” It had a shorter life than the crusade for Moorish dignity, so I’m not sure how he planned to use degeneracy to save the world, but it would have been a tough row to hoe.

Here is a sample of the world according to Ignatius:


“With the breakdown of the medieval system, the gods of chaos, lunacy, and bad taste gained ascendancy.”

“I am at the moment writing a lengthy indictment against our century. When my brain begins to reel from my literary labors, I make an occasional cheese dip.”

“Having once been so high, humanity fell so low. What had once been dedicated to the soul was now dedicated to the sale.”

“A firm rule must be imposed upon our nation before it destroys itself. The United States needs some theology and geometry, some taste and decency. I suspect that we are teetering on the edge of the abyss.”

“I mingle with my peers or no one, and since I have no peers, I mingle with no one.”

“You may remember that Mark Twain preferred to lie supinely in bed while composing those rather dated and boring efforts which contemporary scholars try to prove meaningful. Venerating Mark Twain is one of the roots of our current intellectual stalemate.”


In his introduction, Walker Percy describes the novel as “a gargantuan tumultuous tragicomedy.” Elif Shafak writing in The Independent describes it as “a story of loneliness amid crowds, a comedy that hurts.”

Sam Jordinson in The Guardian takes it even farther when he writes:

“It is quite profound about the nature of loneliness and eccentricity, and fitting into the world. Ignatius J. Reilly is, in some ways, an eerily accurate prototype of the internet troll: a man who tongue-lashes everyone and everything, rather than confront his own sense of inadequacy.”

Whatever it is, it is a strange book – and reading it is a strange trip, one that I have taken twice, and enjoyed both times.

A Whiff and a Sniff and I'm Off

Well, I finished and I'm glad I persisted.
You know how dogs sometimes sniff each other for ages before deciding to hump?
I was like that for a few years before I read the book, but more importantly I sniffed around ineffectually for the first 100 pages and could easily have blamed the book for my lack of engagement.
I read the last 300 pages in a couple of sittings.
I had to get on a roll.
But once you commit, the book pulls you, rather than you having to push the book.
In the beginning, I was afraid that it was going to be like a bowl of two kilos of green jelly that was just too rich or disgusting to finish.
Instead, I felt it was just the right amount.
So, some reactions.

Style

I thought "Confederacy" was very much like a zany TV sitcom.
There was minimal description of scene and action.
However, the dialogue was consistently high quality and very, very funny.
You do want to write down some of the lines, so that you can use them on your friends, but secretly you know that you'll never get into a situation where they'd be equally appropriate or funny.
You just have to recommend the book to the right person.

The Author/Protagonist

Initially, I probably made the mistake of confusing JK Toole with his protagonist, Ignatius J. Reilly.
However, when I realised that Toole was a slim, neat, tidy English teacher, quite unlike the obese Ignatius, I started to imagine Toole reading extracts from the book in class.
Apparently, he was really popular with his students.
I could just imagine the sense of privilege hearing him reading from "Confederacy".
I can imagine the fits of laughter his students would have had as they heard some of the sentences and expressions emerge from his mouth.
I like to imagine Toole alive and vital.

Ignatius Reilly

Ignatius is a resident of 1960's New Orleans, the fat kid in school who turns out to be a genius, but has no social graces.
I don't recall him reading a book in the novel, but he is obviously well-read.
He has constructed his own medieval world-view by which he judges everything and everybody around him.
He sees himself as "an avenging sword" in a crusade on behalf of taste and decency, theology and geometry and the cultivation of a Rich Inner Life.
He speaks in a wonderful, bookish formality that really confounds and pisses off everybody around him:
"Do you think that I am going to perambulate about in that sinkhole of vice?"
When he combines it with a dose of sarcasm, it's hilarious.

Astounding Arrogance

Ignatius is intellectually arrogant, he judges others harshly, he is removed from reality.
He is literally and metaphorically larger than life:
"The grandeur of my physique, the complexity of my worldview, the decency and taste implicit in my carriage, the grace with which I function in the mire of today's world - all of these at once confuse and astound Clyde."
It's tempting to wonder whether Toole intended him to be an inept, but God-like genius, someone who came to the world in order to lead people to Heaven on Earth.
There isn't an evil bone in his ample body.
But he isn't virtuous as we would normally use the word.
He's motivated by the greater good, only he hasn't factored people into the equation.
When he ventures into reality for some purpose or other, it inevitably results in chaos and disorder, so there's a sense in which he's an agent of chaos.
Ultimately, I think Ignatius isn't the Messiah, he's just a haughty, naughty boy.

Infuences

Much has been written about the influences on the novel.
This is probably something better left to the individual reader, after you've read the book.
Suffice it to say that I probably wasn't conscious of a lot of the influences, other than the obvious references to Boethius' "The Consolations of Philosophy".
In one of his more benevolent moments, Ignatius says of "Consolations":
"The book teaches us to accept that which we cannot change. It describes the plight of a just man in an unjust society."
Ironically, Ignatius sets out to change just about everything in his life, whether consciously or subconsciously.
He is not content with conformity: "They would try to make me into a moron who liked television and new cars and frozen food."
Whatever the influences, "Confederacy" has an artistic integrity of its own.

The Cloistered Mind

Ignatius starts off sloth-like (nowadays he would play games and drink copious amounts of Coke all day and all of the night):
"I was emulating the poet Milton by spending my youth in seclusion, meditation and study".
His college love interest, Myrna Minkoff, is awake up to the fact that he has closed his "mind to both love and society", a "strange medieval mind in its cloister".

Up from the Sloth

Ignatius' mother embarrasses and coaxes him into getting a job, which is the beginning of his interaction with the wider world.
"It is clearly time for me to step boldly into our society, not in the boring, passive manner of the Myrna Minkoff school of social action, but with great style and zest."
Structurally, on his journey, the novel loosely deals with the three taboos in polite society: sex, religion and politics (though not necessarily in that order).
Ignatius ventures through this subject matter on the way to some sort of climax or revelation at the end of the book.

The Importance of Being Earnest

On the way, Toole has lots of fun with his subject matter and influences.
Ignatius strikes up an alliance with an openly gay character in their political battle:
"I suspect that beneath your offensively and vulgarly effeminate facade there may be a soul of sorts."
When his new soul mate hands him his business card, Ignatius ejaculates, "Oh, my God, you can't really be named Dorian Greene."
Dorian responds, "Yes, isn't that wild?"
Together they set off to "Save the World Through Degeneracy".
Ignatius is all the more attracted to this scheme, because he knows what effect it will have on Myrna:
"The scheme is too breathtaking for the literal, liberal minx mind mired in a claustrophobic clutch of cliches."

A Party in the City of Vice

As "Confederacy" works towards its climax, the action escalates.
It starts at a fund-raising party in an apartment, then it goes into the streets of this home of the Mardi Gras, a Carnival-esque city of vice, and then finally to the strip joint, "Night of Joy".
Failing to negotiate his way through the debauchery, Ignatius ends up ejected and dejected in the street, where he is almost run over by the reality of a city bus.

Freudian Schleps

I don't want to make too much of this point, but I wondered whether the three main characters of "Confederacy" line up like this in terms of Freud's trichotomy:
Ignatius: Ego
Mother: Super-Ego
Myrna: Id.
These three aspects of Ignatius' life and personality work their way to some sort of resolution at the end of the book.
Whether Freud was a conscious influence or strategy, it is possible that Freud's trichotomy might just be a nice metaphor for the influences on our worldview.

SPOILER ALERT

Salvation

After all of the fun and games, it's difficult to predict how Toole would end his farce.
But ultimately he was a romantic at heart, and there is a happy ending.
Myrna visits Ignatius with the intention of removing him from the City of Vice and the vice-like grip of his mother.
Her solution is to take him to New York, where she has been living.
You wonder whether this is just swapping one city of vice for another, but to them New York represents a city of light, possibly of like minds, a cosmopolitan alternative to the conservative southern backwater of New Orleans.
The story ends as they head out on the road.
But we know what is in store for Ignatius and Myrna in New York: love and society and, perhaps, just perhaps, lots of sex.
Ignatius ends his journey with the most romantic thing he could say to reconcile with Myrna:
"To think that I fought your wisdom for years".
Toole's students would have had tears in their eyes.

February 24, 2011

Ooo-wee, was this a wacky, weird literary ride! Whoah.

The cover itself was enough to put me off, and the beginning was just so bizarre that I wondered what I was getting into. But I'm glad I persevered.

John Kennedy Toole won the Pulitzer for this book in 1981. Sadly, it was awarded posthumously as he committed suicide some years earlier at the age of 31.

"Dunces" is one of a kind. I'm not sure how to describe it, or classify it. So I'll just mention a few things that struck me:

Ignatius Jacques Reilly, the most unique anti-hero you'll meet
He's thirty-something. He's obese. He's completely at the mercy of his "valve", belching and otherwise emitting gas with a shocking reliability. He's lazy, he's rude, he's a virgin, and he's totally unaware and unconcerned at how others perceive him. He is also a genius - a genius who is totally ineffectual at life. He speaks with an intellectual formality and has a very unique world view based on an incomprehensible Medieval philosophy. He is a total non-conformist and non-participant in the world. Until of course, his mother insists he go out and get a job. Then the shenanigans really begin.

Satirical, slapstick, caricature-based, not-politically-correct HUMOUR
If you can get past the utter unlikableness of IJR, you will be laughing out loud with regularity. I was. The characters are ridiculous and silly. The reactions to Ignatius are priceless. Usually, it's either sheer bafflement or downright repulsion.

Dialogue to die for
The writing isn't very descriptive (unless emphasising Ignatius' size, or the amount of turquoise eye shadow on Mrs. Levy's lids). But the dialogue is fantastic, funny and brings the New Orleans dialect to life. This is especially true of the character of Burma Jones, ooo-wee! I delighted every time that guy came into a scene, just so I could hear what he said next.

Nod to Oscar Wilde
The humour and wit isn't totally unlike the wonderful Oscar Wilde, and I enjoyed how the author managed to bring him in using an openly gay character named Dorian Greene.

Having never been to New Orleans, I'm sure I'm missing a richer appreciation that would come from knowing the places and people there. I also can see how this could get mixed reactions. However, for me, this was such a unique, intelligent, farcical story. So much fun!

O Τάλευ έφυγε νέος, 30-αρης - απεγνωσμένος για την ατελέσφορη εκδοτική προσπάθεια του βιβλίου του, αυτοκτόνησε. Το βιβλίο είχε μια πολύ ρομαντική τύχη, όμως: η μάνα μετά από επιμονή πως τούτο είναι ένα διαμάντι της μυθοπλασίας, χτυπούσε πόρτες μέχρι που ένας μεγάλος οίκος συνειδητοποίησε το διαμάντι στις σελίδες του χειρόγραφου, και το εξέδωσε.

Ο κόσμος της λογοτεχνίας έχει τους μύθους της οι οποίοι διαμορφώνονται μέσα από ιστορίες επιτυχίας, τύχης και άλλοτε από την ευμένεια άγνωστων δυνάμεων. Τούτο το βιβλίο δεν έχει αφήσει ένα έντονο αποτύπωμα. Ωστόσο έχει αγκαλιαστεί από μια μεγάλη μερίδα ανθρώπων που το διάβασαν και ενθουσιάστηκαν. Είναι ένα καλτ βιβλίο, προϊόν μιας τραγική ιστορίας. Είναι καλό; Αξίζει ο όποιος ντόρος;

Είναι ένα διαμάντι;

Ο Ιγνάτιος, πρωταγωνιστής της ιστορίας, ζει με τον δικό του ιδιόμορφο τρόπο στην Ν. Ορλεάνη, μαζί με την μάνα του. Έχει μαζί της μια σχέση εξάρτησης και συγκρούσεων, όπως και με τον υπόλοιπο κόσμο γύρω του, ο οποίος, όπως λέει ο ίδιος, δεν διέπεται από τους κανόνες γεωμετρίας και ευσέβειας που θα του έπρεπε. Το βιβλίο συνθέτει και τελικά ζωντανεύει έναν σπάνιο χαρακτήρα, ποιότητας και διαμετρήματος αντάξιας ενός Δον Κιχώτη, ενός Μεφιστοφελή, ενός Αχαάβ - κοντολογίς άνετα μπαίνει στο πάνθεον των αξιομνημόνευτων βιβλιο-δημιουργημάτων. Ένας άχαρος, γιγαντόσωμος και αλλόφρων νέος, που περιφέρεται στην πόλη του, σταδιακά στα μάτια του αναγνώστη σχηματίζεται ως ένας άλλος Δον Κιχώτης - ένας ρομαντικός άνθρωπος που αδυνατεί να συμβαδίσει με τον συγκαιρινό του τρόπο ζωής. Κάνει μπάχαλο τον κόσμο που συναναστρέφεται, με μια αδυσώπητη προσήλωση σε σκοπούς γνωστούς μόνο στον ίδιο.

Το βιβλίο είναι εξαιρετικά αστείο, εξαιρετικά καλογραμμένο, με ποιότητα σπάνια. Δεν θα σχολιάσω παραπάνω το επίπεδο συγγραφής του μέσου ευπώλητου που μπροστά σε δαύτο εκμηδενίζεται. Αυτό το βιβλίο πρέπει να διαβαστεί, πρέπει να ακουστεί, να μαθευτεί. Ακόμα και τόσες δεκαετίες μετά την πρώτη του κυκλοφορία, έχει πολλά να δώσει στον βιβλιόφιλο που ψάχνεται.

Είναι, λοιπόν, ένα διαμάντι του εκδοτικού γίγνεσθαι.