I have found that the only definitive way to tell if I am enjoying a book is by reflecting on how often I go to read it.  I guess if I was pressed to, I would break up the experience of reading into two spectrums. The first is the spectrum of present readability to non-readability, measuring my actual enjoyment in the moment. The second is my memory of my enjoyment of the book from enjoyable to “damn why am I reading this?”. It’s an uncomfortable moment when those two spectrums don’t really align. It makes sense to not like a book when you don’t enjoy it while you’re reading it and consequently don’t remember enjoying the process of reading it. And it also makes sense to love a book while you’re reading it to remember loving it later. But what happens when you enjoy a book but when reminiscing on that experience find that you don’t actually enjoy it? I can enjoy the book in the moment, its lyricism or turns of phrase, but its readability in the moment (in my experience) has little to do with its fidelity to my enjoyment later on. I find that when I’m in the middle of a book like this there are long stretches of time where I don’t read at all, avoiding what I remember is a shit book, only to find when I do come back to it that it’s not as bad as I originally thought.  These periods of reading limbo are uncomfortable, especially now that I’m aware of this weird quirk of my reading habits. It feels like my memory is working against me in some unconscious plot to stop me from reading. Like I can’t trust my own opinions.

I’ve been in one of these reading ruts recently while reading A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole. For years people have been recommending it to me. I’ve heard plenty of “It’s the funniest book ever written.”‘s and “I couldn’t put it down!”‘s. I would peruse book shops only to find its bright blue spine shining from the stacks, with the illustrated figure of the red jacketed Ignatius Reilly staring me down with a look of disapproval as if saying to me “What? You haven’t read this yet!?”. I caved in about a year ago and picked up a copy at a used bookstore on the upper east side, only to let it sit on my own bookshelf until I couldn’t bear the chastising eyes of Ignatius any longer and put it into the never ending queue of my reading list. But now as I am in the middle of it, I find it hard to return to. It’s written well, don’t get me wrong. The prose is beautiful and smart, its characters are unforgettable with idiosyncrasies that are at once wild and real. The real problem with it, I think, is that there’s no narrative inertia. The wacky situations that Toole presents to the reader come so unpredictably that to trace back a causal chain of events is impossible. In a way, A Confederacy of Dunces feels like the novel equivalent to a slapstick comedy, like reading a book written by the Marx Brothers. Hilarious while its happening, but when you try to explain it to a friend it just doesn’t come out right.

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Or maybe I’m just too self-serious for this book. Maybe I should just lighten up and let the narrative take me in its gentle grasp while it sweeps me from page to page, and surrender myself to the gargantuan form of Ignatius Reilly. Either could be true, I guess.

-Tim Caston