Fonts

I have tried reading A Confederacy of Dunces many times, and always with the same result: I read ten pages, say "Wow, I really hate this!" and put it away again for a couple of years until the urge (similar in feeling to boredom) creeps up again. One reason I have always shunned it is the loathesome nature of those who champion it [and you can probably tell from my Ignatius-style dictum there that I have in fact now read it] - I knew guys in my college years who were in the more hippie/Black Crowes-sorta frats who would tell you it was the greatest thing ever written, maaan, and just the idea of it eventually came to generally gave me a chill like, I dunno, the thought of Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

SO, I picked it up recently and was surprised to find it quite fun, funny and generally quirky in a good way, if in need of a serious chopping-down or nine. Was shocked!

Then I realized something I think of a lot, but rarely talk about: sometimes a font will put me off a book. The early 90s trade paperback with the cartoon Ignatius and the light blue background was the one I had always tried before, but this time, a chunky Barnes and Noble-style hardback edition turned the trick (and I wonder if the weird publisher name on the spine which now escapes me - the book is at home - is, like Levy Pants, a small place that does nothing all day except tend to its once-every-so-often publishing of this book, like those rumored town/villages in Germany at the advent of CD technology wear the only industry was supposedly the manufacturing of Dark Side of the Moons). To me, the whole tone of the story changed with the change in type!

Do you know this feeling?

Here is a picture of the ill-fated author, btw: