A Confederacy of Dunces [suggested by Naomi Montague]

Never published during his lifetime, John Kennedy Toole’s masterful comic novel takes its title from a quotation in Jonathan Swift’s satirical essay “Thoughts on Various Subjects, Moral and Diverting”.

A monument to sloth, rant and contempt, a behemoth of fat, flatulence and furious suspicion of anything modern – this is Ignatius J. Reilly of New Orleans, noble crusader against a world of dunces. The ordinary folk of New Orleans seem to think he is unhinged. Ignatius ignores them, heaving his vast bulk through the city’s fleshpots in a noble crusade against vice, modernity and ignorance. But his momma has a nasty surprise in store for him: Ignatius must get a job. Undaunted, he uses his new-found employment to further his mission – and now he has a pirate costume and a hot-dog cart to do it with… [product description from Amazon – with interpretation of missing text]

The book has its own Wikipedia page.

Author’s Wikipedia page.
Some biographical notes from the biography.com website.

Shortlisted for this month

The book selector for the month can choose up to three books for nomination. This month Naomi’s alternative choices – on the theme of “comedy” – were:

This Book Will Save Your Life

This Book Will Save Your Life is an uplifting story about one man’s efforts to bring himself back to life. Richard is a modern-day everyman, a middle-aged divorcee trading stocks out of his home in Los Angeles who needs no one. His life has slowed almost to a standstill until two incidents conspire to hurl him back into the world. One day he wakes up with a knotty cramp in his back, which rapidly develops into an all-consuming pain. At the same time a wide sinkhole appears outside his living-room window, threatening the foundations of his house. A vivid novel about compassion and transformation, This Book Will Save Your Life reveals what can happen if you are willing to open yourself up to the world around you. [product description from Amazon]

Author’s Wikipedia page.
Author’s website.

Cold Comfort Farm

In Gibbons’s classic tale, a resourceful young heroine finds herself in the gloomy, overwrought world of a Hardy or Bronte novel and proceeds to organize everyone out of their romantic tragedies into the pleasures of normal life. Flora Poste, orphaned at 19, chooses to live with relatives at Cold Comfort Farm in Sussex, where cows are named Feckless, Aimless, Pointless, and Graceless, and the proprietors, the dour Starkadder family, are tyrannized by Flora’s mysterious aunt, who controls the household from a locked room. Flora’s confident and clever management of an alarming cast of eccentrics is only half the pleasure of this novel. The other half is Gibbons’s wicked sendup of romantic cliches, from the mad woman in the attic to the druidical peasants with their West Country accents and mystical herbs. [product description from Amazon]

The book has its own Wikipedia page and was made into a film in 1995, which also has a Wikipedia entry.

Author’s Wikipedia page.