John Kennedy Toole and A Confederacy of Dunces 

When I was in the fifth grade, in about 1981, I was checking out some of my Mom's paperbacks (always good stuff in the parents' books if you have cool parents) when I came across John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces. Interested by the cover image of a gargantuan figure dressed in a green hunting cap, I picked it up and started reading.

This book turned me into a weirdo.

OK, that's not entirely true. I was probably a weirdo before I ever picked up this book. However, I think I became a bit more aware of my weirdness because of Confederacy.

It wasn't that I identified with any of the characters in the book so much. I didn't see Ignatius J. Reilley, the hot-dog-vending, pontificating, Fortuna-fearing protagonist, as a kindred spirit or anything like that. I was just really into this book because it made me laugh so much.

Primarily, I liked the ways characters in A Confederacy of Dunces talked. I just couldn't believe that someone could come up with words that sounded so funny together.

As I kept reading Confederacy, my patterns of speech were noticably affected. I was often heard to interject an Ignatius-style "Filth!" when I wanted to show my displeasure. I still can't believe I didn't get into more trouble for using words I picked up from Ignatius and didn't completely understand, such as "abortion" and "mongoloid."

More than anything, however, A Confederacy of Dunces made me aware that I was just a little bit different from my friends. I was fairly sure that whatever they were doing in their spare time, they weren't rereading a 400-page book for the third time. I had some idea that the amount of time and brainpower that I devoted to worshipping this book was completely out of whack, but I couldn't help it. I was hooked.

While Confederacy irreversibly warped me and prepared me for a life of moving from one literary obsession to another, it would be some time before I found another book that affected me so deeply. When I did, the book I chose was fairly predictable.