A Confederacy of Dunces
by John Kennedy Toole
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Book Summary Information
Author: John Kennedy TooleForeword: Walker Percy
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1987
ISBN: 0802130208
Number of pages: 405
Publisher: Grove Weidenfeld
Product features:
- Paper back with comic picutre of the main charactor. 394 pages
Book Reviews of A Confederacy of Dunces
Book Review: Ignatius and the Dunces, What Makes This Novel Tick.
Summary: 5 Stars
This book was great. Toole is masterful in creating amazingly funny images. Very easy to read and made me laugh a lot at many of the situations the main character, Ignaitius faces. Definitely worth buying and reading...
Now to the long review, for all of you who have the patience to read something like this:
The genius of John Toole shines in his "Confederacy of Dunces," a novel about a strange, poor middle-aged man removed from reality of the present. The novel uses several key strategies to make its reader laugh. Most important of all is the character of Ignatius, a young man and the main character of the book. Toole also uses tools like extreme exaggeration and stereotyping, and he relies on Bergson's idea of mechanical encrusted on the living as the means of comedy. Because of the use of these tools, the book moves and makes the reader laugh and sympathize with poor Ignatius, a slow, big hunk of a human.
On the first page of the book the reader runs into the main character's description, which, by the end of the book, becomes synonymous with the character's name, Ignatius. Just analyzing the description (or a part of it, not to spoil the fun and waste too much space) itself can bring great insight into the success of the novel.
A green hunting cap squeezed the top of the fleshy balloon of a head. The green earflaps, full of large ears and uncut hair and the fine bristles that grew in the ears themselves, stuck out on either side like turn signals indicating two directions at once. Full, pursed lips protruded beneath the bushy black moustache and, at their corners, sank into little folds filled with disapproval and potato chip crumbs... Ignatius himself was dressed comfortably and sensibly... The voluminous tweed trousers were durable and permitted unusually free locomotion. ... (13)
The basic description of Ignatius keeps on in the similar manner. Toole shows the main character of the book, a rather large man in his middle thirties, to have a very disturbing appearance. His jacket is old and smelly and makes him look like a lumberjack. His hat adds to the overall hilariousness of the outfit and provides an extra object to make fun of. Ignatius himself is described as being of extreme proportions, and, when walking, all of his weight shakes with each and every fold of his presence. Toole creates a very powerful image of Ignatius, a large barely moving mountain. Amongst normal (not to Ignatius' perception, however) people, who would not have much trouble of walking or running, Ignatius is the king of taking breaks and lunch times, showing him restricted from certain human flexibility.
Henri Bergson, in his study of laughter, "Laughter: an Essay on the Meaning of the Comic," proposes the following idea: in order for a comic to be funny, he should lack the adaptability of a human being. This has been known as "the mechanical encrusted on the living," since robots and other mechanized devices can not adapt to their surroundings as much as humans can. To clarify this idea, here is a typical example of such behavior. Imagine a person walking on a street, and there is a banana peel laying on the ground. There are two possibilities: the person walks around the banana, or steps on it and falls. When would people on the street most likely laugh or chuckle? If the person walks around the banana, nothing happens. (A couple of gloomy faces walk away, perhaps) However, if the person steps on the banana and falls down, a loud roar appears. This situation is funny because any person should be able to miss the peel, but if they don't, they are less adaptive than viewers, and thus more mechanical.
Ignatius immediately jumps out as being more mechanical than people around him. Primarily, his physical shape makes him into such a comic: at one point of the book, he and his 80-year old mother run up the hill. Ignatius prompts his mother to stop running because he is afraid of his heart failing. This situation is already funny - Ignatius can not keep up with an 80 year old woman - and signifies another tool used by Toole to make his book work as a comedy, but more on that later. Since Ignatius can not keep on going, he is less flexible and that makes the reader both laugh at and sympathize with the mountain of a human being. Throughout the whole novel, Ignatius nags and whines about his life, or how he has broken something after bumping into something else. Ignatius also acts like a five year old, whenever he feels like, thus becoming less adaptive to his surroundings. Another reason for Ignatius to be a comic character is the way he dresses. His old, smelly, dirty, ragged clothes show externally his internal disbelief into modern society. And, of course, the reader must agree that Ignatius looks plain silly in his "practical" outfit.
Coming back to the example of Ignatius asking his mother to stop running, it can be seen that this particular situation is funny because a 30-year old man can not keep up with an 80-year old woman. Bergson calls this situation an inversion, where the roles of two objects or people are reversed. Normally, it would be expected for the mother to ask her child to stop running (at least of the ages the reader is presented with in the novel) and to take a break. However, Toole makes the situation funny by reversing Ignatius' and his mother's roles.
Another reason for the above-mentioned situation to be comic is Toole's masterful use of exaggeration. The easiest example to give is the Igantius' size. He is gigantic or even ginormous (if such a word actually existed). This alone creates a funny image in the reader's mind. In addition, there is also contrasting exaggeration, which can be defined as making something very important or big when it is not, and underemphasizing something important. A good example of this technique can be found in the scene, where Mr. Levy, the owner of the pants factory, hears the story about the small uprising of the workers. When he asks Ignatius of the event, the latter asks to fire the person who broke his flower pot and attempted to cut his name sign out of cardboard. When Mr. Levy asks the factory workers what happened, they tell him that Ignatius tried to make them attack the manager of the company. It can be seen that what is important to Ignatius is far from what is truly important. Toole uses this technique throughout the whole novel to contrast Igantius' beliefs and principles to the people around him or at least the general stereotype of normal people.
This brings on the last discussed technique used by Toole to make his reader laugh - stereotyping. In the "Confederacy of Dunces," a couple of stereotypes play a major role: fat people like to eat, cops are stupid, Africans Americans work as cheap labor, just to name a few. Toole draws a parallel with the work of Woody Allen, who likes to use stereotypes in his movies and writing. (That can be seen rather easily in "Annie Hall.") The example of the first stereotype is easily seen from the text - Ignatius always eats something or thinks about lunch. The most vivid encounter with Ignatius' food habits is experienced by the lieutenant and the doughnut box after Ignatius went through it - few of left over from a dozen jelly doughnuts had all the jelly sucked out of them. The image of a large man sucking jelly out of doughnuts makes hair stand, but shows pretty well the stereotype of an oversized person: doing nothing else but eating food, watching TV, and laying down.
The next stereotype explored by Toole - the stupid police - is shown rather well by Lieutenant Mancuso, who tries to arrest Ignatius for no apparent reason (other than a funny looking hat). Mancuso is shown as an incompetent policeman since he can't catch any true criminals. The last stereotype is closely shown by Jones, the floor sweeper of a shady bar, and all of the workers of the pants factory. Toole plays on the stereotypes and creates dialogue closely resembling to the stereotypical conversations, thus creating amusing situations and making the reader laugh.
By using the techniques of extreme exaggeration, stereotyping, and mechanical encrusted on the living, Toole provides the driving force for his comic novel "Confederacy of Dunces." Toole intertwines many of the above listed tools and uses them creatively to persuade the reader to laugh and sympathize with the poor, huge, out-of-this-world man named Ignatius.
Summary of A Confederacy of Dunces
A Confederacy of Dunces is an American comic masterpiece. John Kennedy Toole?s hero is one Ignatius J. Reilly, “huge, obese, fractious, fastidious, and a latter-day Gargantua, a Don Quixote of the French Quarter. His story bursts with wholly original character, denizens of New Orleans? lower depths, incredibly true-to-life dialogue, and the zaniest series of high and low comic adventures? (Henry Kisor, Chicago Sun Times)
"A green hunting cap squeezed the top of the fleshy balloon of a head. The green earflaps, full of large ears and uncut hair and the fine bristles that grew in the ears themselves, stuck out on either side like turn signals indicating two directions at once. Full, pursed lips protruded beneath the bushy black moustache and, at their corners, sank into little folds filled with disapproval and potato chip crumbs."
Meet Ignatius J. Reilly, the hero of John Kennedy Toole's tragicomic tale, A Confederacy of Dunces. This 30-year-old medievalist lives at home with his mother in New Orleans, pens his magnum opus on Big Chief writing pads he keeps hidden under his bed, and relays to anyone who will listen the traumatic experience he once had on a Greyhound Scenicruiser bound for Baton Rouge. ("Speeding along in that bus was like hurtling into the abyss.") But Ignatius's quiet life of tyrannizing his mother and writing his endless comparative history screeches to a halt when he is almost arrested by the overeager Patrolman Mancuso--who mistakes him for a vagrant--and then involved in a car accident with his tipsy mother behind the wheel. One thing leads to another, and before he knows it, Ignatius is out pounding the pavement in search of a job.
Over the next several hundred pages, our hero stumbles from one adventure to the next. His stint as a hotdog vendor is less than successful, and he soon turns his employers at the Levy Pants Company on their heads. Ignatius's path through the working world is populated by marvelous secondary characters: the stripper Darlene and her talented cockatoo; the septuagenarian secretary Miss Trixie, whose desperate attempts to retire are constantly, comically thwarted; gay blade Dorian Greene; sinister Miss Lee, proprietor of the Night of Joy nightclub; and Myrna Minkoff, the girl Ignatius loves to hate. The many subplots that weave through A Confederacy of Dunces are as complicated as anything you'll find in a Dickens novel, and just as beautifully tied together in the end. But it is Ignatius--selfish, domineering, and deluded, tragic and comic and larger than life--who carries the story. He is a modern-day Quixote beset by giants of the modern age. His fragility cracks the shell of comic bluster, revealing a deep streak of melancholy beneath the antic humor. John Kennedy Toole committed suicide in 1969 and never saw the publication of his novel. Ignatius Reilly is what he left behind, a fitting memorial to a talented and tormented life. --Alix Wilber
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