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What I’m Reading Now 2

Posted November 29, 2009 by Patrick Young, Esq.

This new feature lets you know what I’m reading now along with thoughts on the last book I finished. Here is a more elaborate explanation.
And, no, it doesn’t have anything to do with immigration. And these aren’t book reviews, either.
What I Am Reading Now: The Third Reich At War by Richard J. Evans
What I Just Finished Reading: A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole (Wings Books 1980).
Boethius was a Roman senator who lived after the Empire had been destroyed. He had crossed the barbarians who held the city and was sentenced to death. While awaiting his execution, he wrote a short book called The Consolation of Philosophy. After his death, it became one of the most read books of the next six hundred years.
I read this book when I was a philosophy student thirty years ago. When my wife died three years ago, I re-read it.
It is often called the last Book of Antiquity and the First Book of the Middle Ages. People who read it find consolation both in its words and in the knowledge that the condemned Boethius was able to endure the wait for his own death through its writing.
Ignatious J. Reilly is a scholar who finds employment in New Orleans as a hot dog vendor. One day he comes upon a bit of pornography, the nude picture of a woman. He falls in love with her image, not because of her salacious body, nor for the attractions of her face. In fact, her face is obscured because she is reading a book, The Consolation of Philosophy.
The efforts of this true scholastic to find his true love, a philosophical prostitute, forms the core of the book A Confederacy of Dunces. If I described the plot, you would want to read it. Unfortunately, the book is not as good as its plot and while you will enjoy retelling the story, you will not enjoy reading it nearly as much.
The author committed suicide before it was published, and maybe he would have benefited from some editor’s input.
There have been continuous efforts to bring the book to the screen, where it might be tightened up a bit, but those efforts have been waylaid by “THE CURSE”.
Here is how the curse supposedly has revealed itself:
The author, Toole, killed himself before publication.
In 1982 John Belushi was cast to play the lead with Richard Pryor under consideration for a featured role, and we all know what happened to them. Then the woman who was promoting the film for the Louisiana film commission was murdered by her husband. Next up to play the fat Ignatius J. Reilly was John Candy. When he died suddenly, Chris Farley became the obvious fill in.
And let’s not even talk about Hurricane Katrina’s role in delaying a new attempt that was supposed to star Will Ferrel.
As Ignatius would have said; “Oh Fortuna, you wretch.”
See what else I’ve read since Sept. 1, 2009.
A Great Idea at the Time: The Rise, Fall, and Curious Afterlife of the Great Books by Alex Beam