This book is more amusing than I expected it to be.
"Finally, when her hostility had become a palpable, living thing...I took her aside and, in a carefully memorized speech, confessed to her I was mentally retarded and had been sent to Paris on a special program of rehabilitation. With heartbreaking cries of "Oh, pardon, monsieur, pardon, pardon," she clutched me in a wrestler's grip to her breast. From that day forward, I received an extra croissant at breakfast, a maternal pat on the head, and she regarded each pitiful advance I made as miraculous and proof of a living God. Not only was I retarded, she would explain proudly to her friends, pointing her index finger to her temple, but I was also writing a book on the agonies of retardation on a grant from the American government." (page 210, Pat Conroy, "My Reading Life")
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