A Confederacy of Dunces

A Confederacy of Dunces
by John Kennedy Toole

A Confederacy of Dunces
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Book Summary Information

Author: John Kennedy Toole
Foreword: Walker Percy
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 1987
ISBN: 0802130208
Number of pages: 405
Publisher: Grove Weidenfeld

Book Reviews of A Confederacy of Dunces

Book Review: a comedic, and sometimes misunderstood, masterpiece
Summary: 5 Stars

"A confederacy of Dunces" is the funniest book I have ever read. It had me in full belly laughs, almost near tears at times. So why am I so sad after reading it? I guess it largely has to do with the story of the author, John Kennedy Toole. A common attack on this book - indeed the original attack which caused its initial rejection - is that it "isn't about anything." But when viewed within the context of Toole's life and death, the book gains enormous meaning.

I think that there is more than just a little of John Kenndy Toole in the character of Ignatius J. Reilly. Ignatius ranks up there with the greatest literary characters in history. He is vivid, bright, alive, and unique. His motivations are complex, and he constantly lies to himself, and therefore to the reader. On the surface, he appears incredibly obtuse and dense (and he is!) but yet other times, notably when he needs to save his own rear, he is incredibly cunning and insightful. One my favorite moments in the book is when, after days on end of lazily and aimlessly pushing his cart about, eating more hot dogs then he sells and being rude to just about everybody he meets, he has a pressing need for some money. Suddenly, he knows exactly where to go to find some business, and almost immediately sells all of his hot dogs: "Calling, entreating, he guided the wagon into the crowd of men and succeeded in selling all of his hot dogs, courteously and effusively squirting ketchup and mustard on his sold goods with all the energy of a fireman."

What many people don't understand is that Ignatius rejects society because society rejects him. An overly intelligent, unattractive, overweight, poor, fatherless boy - was he the most popular kid in high school? More like least popular. So he has taken this rejection and chosen to wear it like a shroud. It is his protection. If a society that he utterly condemns and despises rejects him, so what? But we all know that deep in his heart, there is pain.

So there is just one level of your meaning! This book is most certainly not "about nothing." But as John Kennedy Toole learned the hard way, not everyone is capable of "getting" it. And that is what breaks my heart most of all. That this man poured his soul into what truly is a comedic masterpiece, only to have it rejected, like I imagine he had been rejected his entire life. "A Confederacy of Dunces" deserves every bit of praise it has received.

Summary of A Confederacy of Dunces

This Pulitzer Prize-winning novel has sold over three-quarters of a million copies and continues to earn critical acclaim. The story of one Ignatius J. Reilly, a "Don Quixote of the French Quarter," it is a masterpiece of human folly and tragedy.
"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

Toole, John Kennedy Books

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