"Oh, my God!" Ignatius slobbered. "The minx has been raped by a Mau-Mau."

i finished my book for bookclub some time back and i was having trouble deciding if i should read "the tipping point" or "the eyre affair" or "the planets" next. so i asked gabe to pick one for me. he did.

REVIEWS OF THE DUCHESS: A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES (book)

there's a reason that this book won the pulitzer. but the fact that it won one of the most prestigious book awards AND is a comedy is certainly saying something. i mean, it's like a comedy winning an oscar...it had better be damn good.

and this book is damn good.

ignatius reilly is quite possibly the best character i have ever seen in a book. he is slothful and disgusting, too smart for his own cynicism, and eccentric to a fault. you would slap the shit out of this boy were you to come across him in real life, but you can't help but completely identify with him and you itch to see what kind of assyness he's about to commit next. you see, he's got this VALVE.....

the author's story is a tragic one. he offed himself some time before his mother pushed hard enough to get the book published. sad for him, because he missed out on the credit (harvey pekar is rolling over in his bed), and sad for us because his style and pace is a miracle, screaming for a bigger cannon of work. his characters are glorious and individual, each written with a different cadence and voice, and, like an anime series or comic book, each of their personal quirks and faults leads them to interlocking paths like pieces of a comedy puzzle.

i know you've heard of it. i know you've seen it on the shelf and have been all like, "hmm, i've heard of that. i should read that." i know you know they've been talking about making a movie of it forever and that you think waiting for that will be easier. but there's no way a movie could successfully be made of this book. it would be a shell, a shadow, a mere usury of the book's ideas. if you've been waiting for someone you know to tell you it's a hella good book, well then. amber says, "it's a hella good book! now go brave the vagrants at the local library and pick yourself up a copy, yo! do it now! DO IT NOW!!! or. you know. whenever."

veto? we don't need no stinking vetos.

dear mr. bush.

i would like to tell you a little story about a man named copernicus. he lived in a far-away land, way, way, way across the big, big ocean. (yes, there ARE countries on the other side!) he lived a long time ago, when people believed that a couple of grains of rice thrown in a dark corner with an old shirt would magically produce mice! isn't that silly? they also believed that the sun went around the earth and not the other way around...

..you DO know that the EARTH goes around the SUN, right? .... alright then.

anyway. these were good god-fearing folk, but a little stupid, wouldn't you agree? i mean, they believed that god loved them so much that the earth was made in the very center of the universe and that god made the sun to go around them. how wrong they were!

in fact, copernicus was a good, god-fearing scientist in those days, and he tried to tell people that the earth traveled around the sun. "heretic!" they cried! "burn him at the stake!" they believed in their faith so much that they were willing to kill this innocent scientist that did nothing but bring truth to our world!

don't cry, mr. president; copernicus lived to a good old age....well. as old as they did back then, which was younger than you are now. too bad they didn't have the advances in science and technology back then that they have now, eh? how much better and longer our lives are because of scientific research! and good fundamentalists know now that the sun and the working of the stars are not geo-centric, but that god loves us all the same. we are no worse off for our knowledge, right?

i mean, it would be terrible if we let blind faith stop us from becoming smarter and living longer and being better teachers for our children, (who, i might add, are being pushed to study those sciences and technologies that could be terribly stunted by good, god-fearing ideals) wouldn't it?

by proving that we are not the center of the universe, scientists studied the stars and questioned the physics of this world until we were able to leave it and explore outside. that made people dream of aliens and other possible worlds, and h.g. wells took that notion and had some fun with it and all of hollywood picked up on the idea and that's where alien and monster films come from, and those are fun, aren't they? you like them so much!

so you see where one open door can lead us, mr. president? to MONSTER FILMS! OOOOOO!!!! and that was just because some guy with a puddingbowl haircut decided to look at the sun! what do you think would happen if YOU looked at the sun, mr. president? why not give it a try? get a good, long look! maybe an hour or two! what do you think you'll learn?

isn't science wonderful? and, through all we've learned, god STILL loves us! yay!

just a thought,
amber.