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Title: World's Longest Suicide Note
Review: If "Bridges of Madison County" is the world's longest Hallmark card, "Confederacy of Dunces" has to be the world's longest suicide note. Only someone trapped in the grip of despair could create a character, a character as near to being unredeemable as any other that I've found in literature. Perhaps Dickens's Uriah Heep comes close. At the end of "Dunces," I felt sullied, yet also sad. I feel as though I'd watched a crime take place -- no, several crimes take place -- and yet could do nothing to stop them. This book, along with "Foucault's Pendulum," perhaps the most pretentious book ever written, are the only two stories I've read that I cannot, in good conscience, recommend to anyone. Life really is too short. Having said this, any readers of this story, whether they liked it or hated it, might wish to compare it to either the comic burlesque novel "Gargantua & Pantagruel" or the play "Ubu Roi."
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