It is a rare thing to find a funny novel. Novels often have funny passages, but a novel that is laugh out loud funny from start to finish is a rare thing.
In 1980, John Kennedy Toole published just such a rarity. He never saw it in print. He committee suicide before then, but his Mother pushed the book to many potential publishers before finding a taker. The literary world should praise her persistence.
Toole created a character like few others in literature. The closest I can think of is John Falstaff but Toole's hero, Ignatius J. Reilly is far stranger and far funnier that Shakespeare's comic creation. Reilly is a genius and as lazy a human as you can imagine. He lives in New Orleans with his Mother and confronts the Modern World with a mind that would have been fear more at ease in the Middle Ages. He is morbidly obese, unkempt. and has few, very few, social graces.
He is forced, through odd circumstances, to go out and find a job. I won't mention the circumstances; you will have to read the novel. His entry into the working world and his encounters with a variety of exceptionally odd folks makes for the funniest novel I know of. Give the book a read and enjoy a nice, long laugh.
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