A Confederacy of Dunces

by John Kennedy Toole

Possession of anything new or expensive only reflected a person’s lack of theology and geometry; it could even cast doubts upon one’s soul.

“What got into your head that made you encourage those two characters last night? Every day, every day, Darlene, I try to explain to you the kind of clientele we want in here. Then I walk in and find you eating crap off my bar with some old lady and a fat turd. You trying to close down my business?

The siren, a cacophony of twelve crazed bobcats, was enough to make suspicious characters within a half-mile radius defecate in panic and rush for cover. Patrolman Mancuso’s love for the motorcycle was platonically intense.

There was even a small demonstration outside the window of my office. It was rather dramatic. For being such simple, ignorant children, they managed it quite well. At the height of the demonstration I dumped all of the old papers—ungraded, of course—out of the window and right onto the students’ heads. The college was too small to accept this act of defiance against the abyss of contemporary academia.” “Ignatius! You never told me that.” “I did not want to excite you at the time. I also told the students that, for the sake of humanity’s future, I hoped that they were all sterile.”

The old woman pulled the bell cord and got out of the seat, trying self-consciously to avoid any contact with the anatomy of Jones, who watched her writhing through the detachment of his green lenses. “Look at that. She think I got siphlus and TB and a hard-on and I gonna cut her up with a razor and lif her purse. Ooo-wee.”

Myrna is very sincere; unfortunately, she is also offensive.

“Please blow your smoke elsewhere. My respiratory system, unfortunately, is below par. I suspect that I am the result of particularly weak conception on the part of my father. His sperm was probably emitted in a rather offhand manner.”