I just finished reading John Kennedy O'Toole's first novel, The Neon Bible. Although quite promising in many ways (and so vastly different from A Confederacy of Dunces that comparisons are meaningless), O'Toole was still learning his trade as a writer (although I must say it's better than the novels I wrote when I was sixteen). He has a penchant for creating unforgettable characters (Aunt Mae here; Ignatius O'Reilly in Confederacy), but in the Neon Bible they are not given much air to breathe, to live, to climax. For a short novel that dragged, the last two chapters seem rushed, an afterthought, a convenient way to wrap up what seemed a slow-burning crescendo of the narrator's life. Also, yes, the narrative is first person, so it's hard to read three quarters of a novel composed of merely simple sentences. I expected the diction to rise a litle at the end, when David is sixteen, but it kept that same, monotonous simplicity. This simplicity works when David is eight and O'Toole wants to impart some irony with the reader without David coming right out and saying it, but David at sixteen is just as confused an lost as younger David. There is no resolution, no closure, for David, except for escape. The reader literally feels as if he is ripped from our lives. What happened to David? Did he ever make it?

I guess one only needs to look at the life of John Kennedy O'Toole for an answer to that question.