Proudly Philistine

The NYT has an article that lists the best works of American fiction in the last 25 years. Among the listed books under the runners-up section is one I recently read, Confederacy of Dunces. There is a raving review here, which calls it a "comic genius" among other things.

I remember picking it up at the bookstore, b/c of all of the enticing things written about it on its back cover: "an epic comedy"; "an astonishingly good novel"; "destined to become a classic", etc. Oh, and it's a pulitzer prize winner.

I read the first chapter. I'm not getting into it. But I'm optimistic. Sometimes it takes a while to get into a deep book. I read the second chapter, and I still am not vested in the book. By the third and fourth chapter, it's readable, and even enjoyable in parts, but I'm still not quite getting the comedy and its purported astonishing goodness.

So I read on in this manner, hoping it gets better, or hoping I'll eventually get it. By page 240, I decide that I'm too much of a literary philistine to fully appreciate the ingeniousness of this comedy and give up. Well, for now at least.

My short version of this book: The main character, Ignatius, is this lazy fat slob who makes these outrageous pronouncements (such as "what abomination is this"), which I think are supposed to be part of the humor. Then there are the other caricature characters--which to this impatient don't-see-the-subtle-layers reader, seem annoying, and un-PC and racist, but I gather are also supposed to be some multiply-layered ingenious social commentary.

I kept on reading, hoping that I will eventually "get it" (after all, it did win a pulitzer prize), and so that I wouldn't have to feel uncultured for not getting it.

Sometimes I think being cultured is highly overrated.

But I guess humor is (figuratively) funny like that. (Well, I guess it can be literally funny as well.) I consider myself to be rather easily amused, but yet, I often find myself not getting things that I feel like I should get.

The TV series Office Space--or was it Office? It's the British sitcom thing--is another example of humor that I just don't get. I've watched both the American and British versions of the very first episode (The British one is just plain awful; the American one is bloody awful. They've managed to take something that I thought was already bad and make it worse.) and haven't had the patience to try to give another episode a chance.

The boss in Office (Space) is obnoxious and makes these un-PC statements that made me uncomfortable/angry, etc., and somehow (as someone was explaining it), this is supposed to be some sort of black humor that is supposed to be funny precisely b/c evokes discomfort.

Huh?

Maybe one episode is not enough to give this show a chance, and maybe I might come back to it again at some future date, but I've decided for now that I have plebian tastes in humor, and instead of slogging through 240 pages of a book I don't enjoy b/c it is a Pulitzer Prize winner, and I have this biased notion that to not be able to understand and appreciate it is a reflection of my lack of culture, I should just shamelessly admit to my ignorance much earlier (like say page 20?) and move on to a book I enjoy more.