A Confederacy of Dunces

The cast of characters in the book is very colorful and interesting, and the prose and mastery of language are just great. At the same time, I found the book excessively over the top, based on the premise that all the characters are stupid and incapable of having a conversation or make any decision that makes sense, or even remotely listening to each other. This makes the book the literary equivalent of a Mel Brooks movie and it is just not that funny. The overall tone is a little condescending, like if the secret of human nature eludes most of the society apart from few literate blessed people.