I'm drawn to weirdos. Is that OK?

Rod, my parents also spent their formative years in southern Louisiana and I've heard plenty of racist comments, though thankfully not very many from my parents themselves. Regarding Favog's cousin, I think it's possible that he may have been masking his intentions by blamimg the race of his doctor for his reluctance to seek treatment for his cancer. It's entirely possible that, if his age is advanced or his life not very valuable in his own eyes, that he could actually see the cancer as a way out. Suicide being regarded as weakness, he may have found it more acceptable in his own racist worldview to refuse treatment and blame the doctor.

Just a thought.

have a lot of experience with weird people, since I've always managed to choose them (or they me) for friends.

The late Mary Ferrell, world renowned researcher of the Kennedy assasination, herself an eccentric, was also renowned for the company she kept in her home. I recall one night, she invited several Nazi types to her home as well as several left wingers and threw Birth of a Nation into the VCR, not to be the evening's entertainment but to launch the evening's entertainment. It turned into a row on her front lawn initiated not by the Nazi guys but by the leftists, one of whom was my date, who decided they wanted to try to beat the cr*p out of them.

Somehow, the fight got broken up, the tape was turned off, and we spent the rest of the evening being regaled with stories by her guests from the witness protection program.

Mary had a ramshackle, two bedroom frame house in Oak Lawn (that she refused to sell to developers) which sat in a lot between two large developments. One bedroom had twin beds, and many times, after an exciting night of drinking and participating in whatever fireworks show was going on in her living room, I would retire to one of the beds. I awakened many mornings to find some weird and famous person snoring in the other bed.

Of course, I was young and single and didn't realize that a steady diet of strangeness can become addictive because it's so exciting! I never thought to ask myself what about me was weird enough to justify Mary's affection but later came to the conclusion that she lived vicariously through my love life, which was very exciting. I think Mary enjoyed it more than I did, though.

It's hard to be "normal" after stuff like that, and the older I've gotten, the harder it's been to recreate excitement in my own life or to find it in the lives of old friends, who like me, have traded excitement for varying degrees of peace.

So, one man's (or woman's) weirdness is another one's fun.

Rod, that sounds like a perfect description of the grotesque in Flannery O'Connor.

Genuine laughter -- as opposed to Jon Stewart style self-righteous snark -- can never be bad.

Laughter *with* someone inspired by the recognition of a fallenness that we all share, as opposed to laughter *at* them, inspired by a wish not to recognize the fallenness we share, inspired by the Luciferian vice of self-pride at someone else's expense.

Actually, come to think of it, and this may be a controversial point, I think that the insistence that one not laugh at something like what Rod describes is morally a worse proposition than what Rod describes.

You're OK if I'm OK. :) I loved Confederacy of Dunces.

I have family from Louisiana. From them, I also learned you can love and respect people, but be horrified by their attitudes about things. Those same people, despite their horrible notions, can also do good and beautiful things. It is complicated.

As for which of you had the most reasonable reaction... both really. If I knew the person, my reaction would have been the same as it was reading about. Smile, roll my eyes, and shake my head.. then follow a second later with 'What a d*mn shame,' or to quote the movie better off dead... 'What a waste of a perfectly good white boy'

Father in law (white) from Louisiana tells me he could not vote for McCain because "he's never voted for a Republican" but cannot vote for Obama "well, just because". He knows I absolutely will not have the N word spoken in front of me, so he doesn't, but he doesn't need to.

"I'm with Mrs. Dreher on ACoD. The book is weird and gross and weird again."

It's an absolutely magnificent triumph of American literature. I respect that some people can't get beyond the "weird and gross" aspect just as I respect that some people can't walk through a room full of some of, say, Titian's paintings without feeling bizarrely overdressed and just a little discomfited. But one's personal reaction to vibrant nudity in art (as opposed to nudity for exploitation, which is what we're more familiar with) no more removes the artistry than individuals' dislike of the elegant carnality of ACoD (as opposed to mere smut, which is abundant in our culture) removes the sublime artistry of that work.

As for weirdos--they're compelling because they are us. Who among us has never slapped down--mentally--a quasi-racist or calumnious or politically incorrect thought or opinion brewing in our own minds, because we are really trying to be better than our worse natures? The "weirdos" reflect, in a sort of carnival funhouse mirror (rather like Toole's novel) those layers of ourselves we keep carefully hidden and strive to overcome; association with them is both sobering and liberating, because they show us the freedom of letting all those thoughts and impulses hang out to dry, so to speak--but they also show us the often grotesque consequences of that liberty.

If we laugh, it is because we are startled and amused by the resemblance; if we shake our heads, it is because we are startled and frightened by it; both are equally valid reactions.

(Now, my thoughts on whether an 88-year-old man has anything at all to gain by being subjected to the indignity of a colonoscopy regardless of the race, creed or national origin of the one overseeing it are another topic entirely--have we gone mad, in our quest to force unwilling octogenarians to live forever?)

My thoughts on this: First, people have bizarre reactions to dying and terminal illness. Often I would not have predicted them. So I think the above commenters who say there could be more to this are right. Second, I have plenty of relatives who resort to black humor with the excuse that they are doctors/nurses/ EMTS/military vets/living in South Texas/the child of dysfunctional parents; they have to. The problem is, that now, at retirement age, they have no compassion left, and they use that "black humor" to deal with every situation. Family, work, friendships, God, you name it. Everything is treated with that "laugh at what's not really funny" attitude. To tell the truth, I suspect they didn't have much compassion to start with.
But, I have a relative who's extremely ill with colon cancer right now, so maybe I just can't find cancer funny today.

Two comments:

In Ray Bradbury's _Something Wicked This Way Comes_, it is laughter which defeats the evil circus that comes to town.

Years ago at an NEH seminar (on late-medival German paleography), we had a seminar leader who was very nice, but boring as heck. A colleague from Indiana U. always seemed to be rapt with attention with her eyes on the notes she appeared to be taking. It turned out that she had a copy of a C of D on her lap & was reading avidly, while trying not to laugh. I read the book later & didn't find it particularly funny--but then I'm from N.O. & those characters seemed like normal people to me.

Ciao!

Confederacy of Dunces is definitely weird, but also the most hilarious book I've ever read. Along the same lines of weird but funny was a TV series that aired on Comedy Central several years ago called "Strangers with Candy" starring Amy Sedaris and Stephen Colbert. It takes a certain strange sense of humor to appreciate it.

My guess is that the man in question (a) didn't want someone poking up his arse, and (b) wasn't bothered about living much longer. An old many I know has a range of semi-debilitating illnesses. He keeps to a gluten-free diet for his coeliac disease, but says that he doesn't know why he bothers because he would trade a week of eating pies and cakes for a decade of living as he does.

I would say that no-one could seriously be that racist, except that the grandmother of a friend of mine was and Ulsterwoman who would not have a TV in the house in case devils flew out of the pope's face if he appeared on the screen.