This is hilarious, freewheeling, and very experimental and risque for its time. Plays fast and loose with narrative, self-reflexiveness, and even mixed-media, and is just loaded with bawdy innuendo, but is also very compassionate and humanistic. Think great satire in the tradition of Swift, and Twain, coupled with a confessional style a la Rousseau(only much more self-effacing than he, fortunately.) It’s a bit of a tough sled due to the archaic language and phrasing, but the screamingly funny bits every five pages or so make it worth slogging onward.