A Confederacy of Dunces

<em> <a style="font-style: italic;" href=[...]</a> </em>by <a href="[...]</a> is funny, wise, and as close to a perfect novel as you’re likely to find. Protagonist Ignatius C. Reilly is a bloated buffoon, a man-baby who lives with his mother, has a troubled digestive valve that causes him to burp and fart with great frequency, and possesses one of the most “unique” worldviews you’re likely to find. Ignatius is loaf completely at ease with his loafishness: <blockquote><em>“I dust a bit,” Ignatius told the policeman. “In addition, I am at the moment writing a lengthy indictment against our century. When my brain begins to reel from my literary labors, I make an occasional cheese dip.”</em></blockquote> Ignatius is like a giant child when he considers his career options and argues with his mother: <blockquote><em>I suspect that something like a newspaper route would be rather agreeable.</em></blockquote> <blockquote><em> “I dare you to come out in that shredded nightgown and get me!” Ignatius answered defiantly and stuck out his massive pink tongue.</em></blockquote> Above all, <em>A Confederacy of Dunces</em> is <em>funny</em>. Laugh out loud is an overused phrase, but <em>COD</em> will make you LOL for realz, yo. The situations are so absurd, the characters so odd, and the dialogue veers between biting satire punctuated by unexpected blasts of pee-your-pants profanity. <blockquote><em>“Go dangle your withered parts over the toilet!” Ignatius screamed savagely. Miss Trixie shuffled away.</em></blockquote> No mater what the problem, Ignatius always finds a way to blame others. <blockquote><em>“Employers sense in me a denial of their values.” He rolled over onto his back. “They fear me. I suspect that they can see that I am forced to function in a century which I loathe.</em></blockquote> <blockquote><em>You must realize the fear and hatred which my </em>weltanschauung<em> instills in people.</em></blockquote> <blockquote><em>He twisted his face into a mask of suffering. There was no use fighting Fortuna until the cycle was over. “You realize, of course, that this is all your fault.</em><em> </em></blockquote> <blockquote><em> “You’re full of bulls***.” </em> <em>“I? The incident is sociologically valid. The blame rests upon our society.”</em></blockquote> Sometimes <em>COD</em> goes for screwball comedy and slapstick. Taken as a whole, <em>COD</em> is the mother of all farces. When he’s not avoiding work or fighting with his mother, Ignatius plots against Myrna, a radical student he once attended classes with. The romantic ending of <em>COD</em> is anticipated but still manages to be unexpectedly satisfying. <blockquote><em>Dr. Talc idly wondered if they (</em>Iggy and Myrna)<em> had married each other. Each certainly deserved the other.</em></blockquote> Through Myrna’s letters we see she has true insight into Ignatius’ personality: <blockquote><em>This “automobile accident” is a new crutch to help you make excuses for your meaningless, impotent existence.</em></blockquote> <blockquote><em>A good, explosive orgasm would cleanse your being and bring you out of the shadows.</em></blockquote> <blockquote><em>Great Oedipus bonds are encircling your brain and destroying you</em></blockquote> <blockquote><em>Ignatius, a very bad crack-up is on the way. You must do something. Even volunteer work at a hospital would snap you out of your apathy,</em> <em>The valve closes because it thinks it is living in a dead organism. Open your heart, Ignatius, and you will open your valve. </em></blockquote> <em> </em> Behind his absurdity, Ignatius is sad and lonely, a sorrow that stems from his isolationism: <blockquote><em>We both exist outside the inner realm of American society. Myrna was, you see, terribly engaged in her society; I, on the other hand, older and wiser, was terribly dis-engaged.</em></blockquote> <blockquote><em>I really have had little to do with them, for I mingle with my peers or no one, and since I have no peers, I mingle with no one.</em></blockquote> <blockquote><em>I don’t dance. I never dance. I have never danced in my life.</em></blockquote> <em>COD</em> is also a love letter to Toole’s native New Orleans: <blockquote><em>Patrolman Mancuso inhaled the moldy scent of the oaks and thought, in a romantic aside, that St. Charles Avenue must be the loveliest place in the world.</em></blockquote> <blockquote><em>New Orleans is, on the other hand, a comfortable metropolis which has a certain apathy and stagnation which I find inoffensive. At least its climate is mild.</em> <em>The balconies of the old buildings hung over my head like dark branches in an allegorical forest of evil.</em></blockquote> I won’t get into the tragic personal history of author John Kenndy Toole. The story behind his career and the publication of <em>COD</em> is itself an impossible tale of heartbreaking genius. But the toxic mother-son relationship at the heart of this novel certainly is rife with autobiographical elements. Ms. Reilly laments Ignatius’ weak work ethic. <blockquote><em> “My heart’s broke.”</em> <em>“Ain’t he writing something?” </em> <em>“Some foolishness nobody never gonna feel like reading.”</em></blockquote> Fortunately, the real-life Thelma Toole felt differently about her son’s work. -30-

This is a well written book with some zany characters; not the least of whom is its main character, Ignatius Reilly. This book could have been hilarious in the way that Joseph Heller's Catch 22 was, except that Tool attempted to make his characters a little too dark. After all, this book is comedic fiction, so there should have been a lightheartedness to it which I found all but absent. Moreover, while author Toole does a credible job of developing his characters, the book itself is held back by its overtly depressing nature. Toole for all of his brilliance as an academic and teacher, just did not seem to be able embody enough humor in his characters to overcome their darkness. And this is unfortunate, because much of this book reveals just how creative and talented a writer John Toole was. However, unlike Catch 22 - which to this day remains my benchmark for comedic novels - I found that I had to force myself to read A Confederacy Of Dunces. Whereas, Catch 22 has such a natural flow to it which made it impossible to put down. Joseph Heller's characters may have had their dark sides, however, they were so funny that it was easy to overlook them. In fact, they were more like cartoon characters that Heller brought to life, while Toole's characters start off in a similar way, yet become so depressing, that much of the humor in this book is overshadowed by this depression. Moreover, as a reader you begin to sense the weight of this depression, and it can make reading the book a chore at times. Furthermore, while it is at times injected with the author's dry sense of humor and considerable wit, A Confederacy Of Dunces is in fact a very dark comedy, which was obviously written from the darkest recesses of a tortured soul. Toole's own mind. Given that this book was first published more than a decade after John Kennedy Toole committed suicide, one must wonder if it was the very darkness within his own psyche that he could not overcome; which resulted in his taking his own life at the age of 31; just as his characters, as humorous as they are at times, can't seem to overcome their own demons. A Confederacy Of Dunces is certainly a worthwhile read, written by a very talented man who is hopefully now at peace. However, how it won a Noble Prize for comedic fiction is as much of a mystery to this reader as is why Catch 22 didn't win a Noble Prize for this literary genre. Recommended with the aforesaid caveats.

You’ve got to read A Confederacy of Dunces to believe it. Ignatius J. Reilly, the novel’s unique and utterly repugnant protagonist, is a slovenly, self-aggrandizing genius who lumbers through life with a mix of delusional grandeur and caustic wit. He’s a spectacle of excess—physically, intellectually, and emotionally—whose every misadventure, from his hot-dog-vending schemes to his tirades against modernity, is a masterclass in cringe-inducing absurdity. You can’t look away, turning pages to see what outrageous, self-inflicted disaster he’ll stumble into next. This book is the wretched refuse and psychotic reflection of Catcher in the Rye, a darkly comedic, unapologetically unhinged cousin that takes J.D. Salinger’s blueprint and douses it in New Orleans sweat and grease. Where Holden Caulfield is a brooding, alienated teenager wrestling with the phoniness of the world, Ignatius is a grotesque, overgrown man-child, waging war against a society he deems beneath his medievalist ideals. Holden’s rebellion is introspective, laced with vulnerability and a yearning for connection; Ignatius’s is bombastic, fueled by arrogance and a perverse glee in his own chaos. If Catcher is a melancholic lament for lost innocence, Dunces is a raucous, satirical assault on propriety, reveling in its protagonist’s refusal to conform—or bathe. Yet both novels share a core of defiance, capturing misfits who rail against a world they can’t (or won’t) fit into, making Ignatius a kind of warped, funhouse-mirror reflection of Holden. John Kennedy Toole’s masterpiece weaves this larger-than-life antihero through a chaotic tapestry of New Orleans’ underbelly, where a cast of misfits—hapless cops, scheming barflies, and exasperated employers—collide in gloriously disastrous ways. It’s a satirical gut-punch, equal parts hilarious and unsettling, that thrives on its grotesque brilliance. You’ll laugh, you’ll grimace, and you’ll never forget it.

Reading for the fourth time. New at every age. Highly recommend.

This novel won the Pulitzer Prize many years ago, and I’ve got to think that had as much to do with the provenance of the book as it did with its quality. It would seem that the author penned this novel at a young age and was unable to get it published. He subsequently committed suicide, whereupon his mother convinced the noted southern author, Walker Percy to take a look at it. Percy was blown away and used his considerable influence to have it published. The story, set in New Orleans, is unusual to say the least. The “hero” of the story is an overeducated, lazy and eccentric lout named Ignatius Reilly. Reilly spends his life wandering through the city, watching movies, doing odd jobs and constantly fretting over his health and well-being. He is clearly mentally imbalanced. Throughout the book, he runs across various other colorful characters, the likes of which have become New Orleans clichés, which develop story threads of their own. Initially, this is a rather amusing book. I did not find it “laugh out loud” funny, as some have professed, but did appreciate the often clever writing. However, after about 100 pages, the schtick began to get old for me. Imagine taking in a Vaudeville act, filled with pratfalls and pies in the face. How long can you watch this before becoming tired of it? Ten, fifteen minutes? Watch it for two hours and you’ll see what I mean. Others have raved about character development. There is no character “development” here, only character presentation. Reilly is a lazy, eccentric slob from page one to the finish. Nobody develops, but instead remains their slotted stereotype throughout the novel. It just gets old.

Ignatius Reilly is one of the most unusual and truly unique characters I have come across in novels. Exceedingly obese, self-centered, disengaged from society by choice, hygienically-challenged.....this is not the typical protagonist a reader would pull for. But, there is something very appealing about this corpulent and unfashionably dressed man from New Orleans that keeps the reader's attention. Like a terrible wreck on the highway that you can't turn away from and secretly hope to see carnage, this is a man you just can't turn away from no matter how loathsome he gets. Whether he is musing on his preference to be a Negro (this is the 1960's) and not have the white man's burden of struggling to attain a place in the misguided middle class, leading factory workers in open revolt, inventing a new filing system, or pushing a hot dog cart through the French Quarter, Ignatius commands your attention. Whether this is a tragic comedy or a comic tragedy is debatable, but one thing is certain: you will find yourself laughing out loud on just about every page. The author's clever use of language, the well-defined secondary characters, and the pure genius of the tale itself leaves you thinking about Ignatius and his mom long after the book is read. Brimming with the local color of New Orleans, the author fills the reader's mind with images from the underbelly of that city, its more unsavory characters, and the dens of ill repute that made it famous. Only once in his life did Ignatius leave the city and that was on an ill-fated bus ride to Baton Rouge, or as Ignatius likes to call it in his many retellings of his misadventure, "the whirlpool of despair". Because of a mistaken arrest which leads to his mother's heavy drinking and subsequent car accident, Ignatius is forced to get a job. And that is when the fun really begins. His Ivy League education has not prepared him for anything other than lying around the house, critiquing American Bandstand, and making demands of his haggard mom. However, when money is desperately needed, Mama tells him to get out of the house and get a job or else. His comic misadventures at Levy's Pants and later as a hot dog vendor on the streets of the French Quarter are hysterically funny. Miss Trixie, the befuddled septuagenarian who only wants to retire, Gonzalez the conscientious office manager, Darlene the stripper who wants to be a star, Jones the janitor who only works to avoid jail, and the incompetent but dedicated Officer Mancuso enter and exit Ignatius' life and all come together in the end to insure a surprisingly logical conclusion for Ignatius.

“A Confederacy of Dunces,” John Kennedy Toole’s bizarre novel about an outlandish character stumbling around New Orleans provokes much controversy in the publishing world. The author, almost as unsettled as his protagonist, Ignatius Reilly, never lived to see his work become published. It was first printed eleven years after his suicide and won the Pulitzer Prize the year after, in 1981. It has since become almost an icon of both comical and tragic modern literature. Toole’s mother was the book’s flag waver, never stopping her relentless campaign to have it published. She finally convinced novelist Walker Percy, then teaching at Loyola, to read through the immense and ragged manuscript who saw the promise. Earlier attempts by Toole had failed to gain support because, in the words of one famous publisher, “It isn’t really about anything.” Toole told friends that his book had been praised as “wildly funny” and “full of ‘wonderfulness’ and ‘excitements’ and ’glories’ “. Indeed it is and one can only question the wisdom of such rejection. But Toole never overcame his disheartenment, killing himself at age thirty-two. Reilly is an educated slob of a man, living with his mother, and half-heartedly trying to find a job. His dress is outlandish, his immense size is subject to much abuse, and his stomach troubles are very public and magnified by his choice of unhealthy food and drink. He has many adventures among the wildly eccentric characters of early-1960s New Orleans but he may be the most off-center of them all. These escapades form the storyline of the novel. The book is, indeed, comical. But there is an undercurrent of sadness and suffering. One feels guilty laughing at the antics that is almost akin to chortling at mentally or physically handicapped individuals. That, to me, is the curious appeal I find in the book. Toole does a masterful job at presenting this enigma, whether or not that is his intention. The dialect is often mentioned as being true art, and the characterizations are products of a writing virtuoso. An indicator of the book’s struggle with acceptance is its unfortunate travels through the motion picture industry. Repeated efforts at turning it into film, with many stars targeted for Reilly’s character, including John Belushi, John Candy, John Goodman, and Will Ferrell, have failed. Toole only wrote the one book, which is unfortunate for readers. I encourage a careful study of his story, keeping in mind that, while the humor never stops, neither does embarrassment of being amused go away. Schuyler T Wallace Author of TIN LIZARD TALES

Gloriously unique with truly entertaining characters. The story begins with an introduction to the iconic main character, Ignatius J. Reilly. Ignatius is not a likeable character; he's pompous, lazy, and slovenly but original. Ignatius Reilly has a run-in with a policeman and thus the story begins and follows a host of more "interesting" characters through a wild romp through New Orleans.