Eugene Ionesco's Hugoliad

He, Victor Hugo, had started life off on the right foot. From the age of twenty-eight, he was taken for a genius.

Can't say I particularly recommend Ionesco's Hugoliad, but I found that line funny. There were a few other funny things in it as well. It's an attack on Hugo in the shape of a biography, but it's not as funny or as pungent as it could be, as Ionesco would become later in his plays like Rhinocerous or Bald Soprano. It is the work of a young Ionesco. It may also be badly translated: it was doubly translated, from the original Romanian to French, and then from French to English.