I caught a little bit of the Great American Read from PBS which led me to their website. I reserved several books at the library from the list to try and expand my reading. Well the first one that came available from the list was a DNF (One Hundred Years of Solitude) and I am kind of torn on this one. I snickered out loud all through this book but I cannot say I enjoyed it and I cannot reconcile in my brain not enjoying a book I found funny.
The book centers around Ignatius Reilly who is a college graduate that still lives at home with his mother. When he is almost arrested by an overenthusiastic but incompetent police officer it sets off a string of events that includes his mother drunkenly driving into a building causing him to have to get a job to help pay the damages. He gets a job at Levy Pants where he tries to start a revolt of the factory workers to compete with his college girlfriend/nemesis Myrna Minkoff. He then gets a job as a hotdog vendor where his cart is unwittingly used for storage for pornographic pictures from the owner of the bar where his mother gets drunk before she drives into the building. There are a ton of colorful characters and the author does a great job weaving the story together with all of the characters and the twists and turns and like I said it is a very funny book but I can’t say I really enjoyed it.
It was written in the early 60s but not published until the 80s and parts are relevant today. I’m not bashing millennials but the obnoxious college graduate that cannot function in the real world written in the 60s is eerily similar to today. I know you are not supposed to like most of the characters and the stereotypes are supposed to be part of the satire but the author did a little too good of a job writing Ignatius. I think he was just too annoying to get past and enjoy the book. The forward of the book explained how the it was published posthumously after the authors death by suicide.