The best satire books of all time with nothing in common, except for one thing

It was a gift, a 2-inch thick, 5 lb. gift, that I had no interest in reading because everybody has already read it – the first modern “novel,” the best-selling novel of all time, etc., so it sat for years on an end table where it served two functions: it gave the room a literary cachet, and it was also a good coaster for coffee cups and such.

But then for some reason, perhaps guilt, perhaps fate, I flipped it open, read a few lines, and then laughed. I was hooked. It was fantastic, funny, and timeless – not just the windmill stuff, but a bunch of other totally outrageous, but totally in character events (e.g., he chops up a puppet show with his sword).

Highly recommended even if everybody has already read it.

Because it was not only a thick* book, but it proved that you can think a book is crap one day, and absolutely love it the next**. 

I was going to have an impacted wisdom tool chiseled out and wanted a book for my convalescence. It had a great cover, so I flipped open to the first page and read the opening line—something like, “Amoebas don’t have bones…”.

I bought it and had the wisdom tooth removed, which evidently actually removed the wisdom needed to appreciate the writing.

Time passed, and I gave the book another try—evidently the wisdom had returned because what had once been chaotic and confusing and stupid, was now delightfully random and effortlessly insightful, and really really fun. I loved this book.

* At least it seemed thick to me at that age.

** Actually, it wasn’t the next day, it was actually about a year or so later.

It was thick book, a satire, and new translation from Czech, and I loved the illustrations, the setting, and that the new translation was restoring all of the salty language excised from the original/bowdlerized translation.

It’s the story of a simple dog breeder, presumed to be an imbecile (an acceptable term at the time), drafted into the army and his adventures making his way to WWI—always outwitting his (imbecilic) superiors and betters along the way.

It’s satirical, hilarious, often scatological, and the best part is that the book ends (because the author died) before he gets to the actual war, so we get to imagine Švejk surviving the war and moving to Florida in the ‘20s to raise Greyhounds or whatever.

It’s really good, in fact, I might just read it again.

I was crazy about a girl who’d dated an English Lit professor.

She was (or at least seemed) very well-read and literary and used big words like “jejune” and “bedizened” and was always inserting Voltaire or T.S. Eliot into casual conversation.

I was an oafish illiterate by comparison, but fate stumbled in and dropped a tattered and stained copy of Candide in the parking lot a few feet from my Fiat 128. It wasn’t a thick book this time, but with it, I could now win her heart. It was wry, savage, wise, caustic, subtle, over-the-top, scathing, sublime, cynical, and sweet.

I’d never ever read anything like it, and I was forever changed; nevertheless, she dumped me for a guy she met at a Renaissance Faire, but I began writing, with Voltaire as my North Star.

The author’s voice captured me.

Once again, I’d never read anything like it before. He was having a conversation with me. I was now a character in an Amsterdam bar with him, the war had just ended, we were smoking cigarettes and drinking gin.

He would respond to my silent questions, and wax and wane philosophically, metaphysically, morally, ethically, and occasionally comically. 

And the beauty was that it had happened so randomly—a roommate had thrown the book in the trash, declaring it to be “bullshit.” I knew the lad to be an imbecile (an acceptable term at the time), so I fished the book out of the trash, read the first sentence, and loved it.

It was the quantumly entangled counter particle to Candide: one particle from the age of reason, the other particle from the age of existentialism.