Could you write a novel featuring hilarious, but pathetic characters?

A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole, is a book filled with marvelously hilarious characters in New Orleans. The characters are well-developed, and continue to be integral to the story all the way to the end.

One of my favorite characters is a policeman named Mancuso. Mancuso's sergeant seems to enjoy abusing Mancuso. He demands that Mancuso bring in "suspicious characters." Mancuso tries his best, but continually fails in this endeavor. The sergeant makes Mancuso dress up in various costumes designed to attract suspicious characters. Finally, the frustrated sergeant requires Mancuso to sequester himself in a toilet stall in the bus depot bathroom until he makes an arrest of a suspicious character. While he does not succeed in catching anything but pneumonia in his days in the toilet stall, Mancuso does succeed in becoming the hero of the story by, well, I guess I won't reveal this in case you want to read the book.

I wonder what it would be like to try to write a book like that one. Today I met a guy who was purchasing nicotine gum or tablets. I remarked to him how expensive they were. He agreed and said he was trying to calculate whether to buy the package with 50 tablets or the one with 100. He decided on the latter, because he said that he was about "to go off the wagon." He then went on to tell me that he had not slept in 14 nights. When I asked him what line of work he is in, he said he does not work, because he had recently been in a car accident in which his car hit three other cars, one of which was being carjacked, and "you can't trust the police."

This remark caused me to look at the man more carefully. He wore dark sunglasses, was about 6'3" and skinny as a rail. His Adam's apple protruded significantly from his neck. The more we talked, the more I realized I had my first character for my own version of The Confederacy of Dunces. Apparently the police investigation of the car accident did not go well for our man in the sunglasses. "The police are only in it for the money," he informed me. "It's your word against theirs."

Actually, I don't think I could write a novel featuring pathetic characters, because I feel a sadness when I realize fellow human beings are messing up their lives. That doesn't preclude me from realizing the humor and tremendous writing talent of an author such as John Kennedy Toole. But the fact remains that God gave each of us unique talents and is available to help each of us to realize those talents. I don't like to give up on fellow humans, even when they devolve to absurd levels.