A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
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Book Reviews of A Confederacy of Dunces
Book Review: Brilliant character study in an unconventional Pulitzer winner
Summary: 5 Stars
"A Confederacy of Dunces," John Kennedy Toole's masterpiece, takes its title from a quote of Jonathon Swift's: "When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him." And so we are introduced to the irrepressible Ignatius J. Reilly, a corpulent behemoth of a man-child living in New Orleans with his long-suffering mother. Ignatius is an oddity of a character: a morbidly obese slob, a lazy intellectual with delusions of grandeur, a hypochondriac constantly worried about the state of his 'valve', an argumentative buffoon in many ways and a damaged genius in others. It's not easy to take to Ignatius for all of these reasons -- which is fair, and I suppose that it is his oddities that make so many reviewers not take him seriously, but I would implore them to look past the facade. There is so much more to Ignatius if you look at the core of his being and try to understand why he is the way he is. Clearly, he is suffering from depression, and his arrogance and laziness are his method of pushing the world away. He wants to be a writer and esteemed intellectual, to bring back the "theology and geometry" that he thinks the world is sorely lacking, but instead of trying to get published he sends a dirty writing tablet filled with his writings to Tulane University with the expectation that they will file it in their library -- as if goading them into rejecting him as a lunatic. Whenever his mother presses him to get a job and make something of his life he is overcome by panic, and inevitably starts complaining that his precious valve is acting up. He clearly resents his living situation and wants to get out of New Orleans (a city he describes as "famous for its gamblers, prostitutes, exhibitionists, anti-Christs, alcoholics, sodomites ..." and, well, you get the point), but he blames fate -- specifically the Goddess Fortuna -- for keeping him chained there, as if he had no say in the matter. Ignatius J. Reilly is a man trapped in a vacuum of his own making, and the tragedy of it all is that it's unclear whether or not he will ever escape himself. The fact that the author, John Kennedy Toole, committed suicide before the book was even published makes this even more poignant. Blessed with an equally eccentric cast of supporting characters including Santa Battaglia, Myrna Minkoff (a woman Ignatius ostensiby despises but can't seem to let go of), and Angelo Mancuso, a police officer reduced to wearing ridiculous disguises when he is told to watch for 'suspicious characters' by his sergeant in order to make a big arrest, "A Confederacy of Dunces" is a novel that seems cartoonish at first glance, but is stunningly brilliant if you just look closer.Book Review: A Southern Gothic Comic Masterpiece
Summary: 5 Stars
"A Confederacy of Dunces" is the standard by which all humorous and satirical novels should be measured. John Kennedy Toole's wickedly profane masterpiece refutes the conventional wisdom is that "serious" literature is never a funny matter.
Toole's principal character, the unforgettable Ignatius J. Reilly is an unlikely champion of the dispossessed and downtrodden. Toole's characterization of Ignatius Reilly is the comic equal of Joseph Heller's wise-ass bombardier Yossarian in "Catch 22", or Phillip Roth's sexually obsessed Alexander Portnoy in "Portnoy's Complaint". Toole's characters are quirky denizens of the bottom rung of rigid social order in of New Orleans in the mid-1960s. It was an era when that rigid social was imploding from the tidal wave of the civil rights movement.
Beneath the Toole's humor lies a darker message about the provincial attitudes of southerners and their deep seated intolerance for those who are different. Toole is exploring the same Southern Gothic territory as author Flannery O' Conner's world, but unlike O' Conner, Toole has absolutely no reverence for the rigid southern customs of civility. Toole's message was that southern society was not only intolerant to its black citizens but to anyone else who refused to fit into southern standards that governed conventional behavior. Toole's prescription is to parody the intolerance of southern behavior as a farce. Like Great Britain's comic troupe, Monty Python, Toole spares no sacred cow in his humor and may offend the sensibilities of those in polite society. Even as he recklessly shoots from the hip when he aims his humor, Toole often creates most memorable comic moments, when he does so.
A few years back, I presented "Confederacy" as my selection for a reading group I participated in. It was a rather staid group of serious readers. At our first meeting to discuss "Confederacy", nobody could read a passage or discuss events of the book without somebody erupting into gales of teary eyed laughing. The laughter was so highly contagious that soon everyone in the group would be consumed in a chorus of hyena-like laughter. After an hour or so, the fits of laughter took on a curious life of their own. Almost as soon as club members were sufficently calmed from a previous explosion of laughter, someone would blink and ignite yet another convulsive round of laughing. We finally had to adjourn discussion because everyone was too paralyzed with laughter to continue. In the end, the book club members agreed that "Confederacy of Dunces" had serious literary merit, but those merits could not be discussed because the content of the book was just too damned funny.
Book Review: The title says it all.
Summary: 5 Stars
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole. Highly recommended.He's egotistical, erudite, ejaculatory (literally), and explosive. He's "emptily verbose" (Merriam-Webster's definition number 3 for "gassy"). He's also that-gassy, a man with a flux. He's Ignatius J. Reilly, a monster of a man with a master's degree, a faulty pyloric valve, a love for Boethius and The Consolation of Philosophy, a hatred for modern life, a passion against anything to do with sex (at least sex involving a second person), and a distinctly lower-class New Orleans lifestyle. He's also a man about whom his own pet phrase could apply: "Do I believe what I am seeing?"
Set in the New Orleans of the 1960s, A Confederacy of Dunces begins with an incident with an overzealously inept policeman that leads Ignatius, one of the most unforgettable characters of American fiction, into a world with which he is unfamiliar and ill-equipped-work. As a result, he encounters a cornucopia of characters-from the cynical female owner of the laughably named "Night of Joy" to the wizened owner of the equally ill-named "Paradise Hotdogs"-who are as unforgettable as Our Hero. The most memorable is undoubtedly the generically named Jones, who, behind his dark glasses and his cloud of cigarette smoke, manages to see the world, its people, and the ironies of situation all too clearly. There are also Ignatius's wine-loving mother, his irascible neighbor, and "Myrna Minx"-the closest Ignatius has ever had to a girlfriend.
Ignatius, taken away from his magnum opus (written on a series of Big Chief tablets strewn everywhere in his room in his mother's house) and the modern movies he so likes to deride, touts the value of The Consolation of Philosophy and bemoans the work of Fortuna while attempting to leave nothing to chance. To feed his laziness and lack of desire to work, he works hard at being sly, devious, and manipulative. He carefully plans and plots his efforts from the perspective of a man who has little perception of human nature; the results are hilariously unexpected-the whims of Fortuna. In the end, Ignatius's life, such as it is, will never be the same thanks to his forced interaction with the outside world.
A Confederacy of Dunces will make you laugh out loud and, at the same time, you will probably detect an undertone of sadness, even hopelessness. As Walker Percy notes in his introduction, perhaps this is due to the knowledge that author Toole committed suicide. But perhaps it is equally due to the absurdity of modern life that the adventures of the larger-than-life Ignatius reveal at every turn.
Diane L. Schirf
2 June 2002.
Book Review: Offering a counterpoise In reply to the dissidents and effrontery;
Summary: 5 Stars
"What an egregious offense to taste and decency!"
So it appears I am forced to rate again; to expiate the dissenting views of fellow readers, and thereby reinstate my original (not to mention incontrovertible) viewpoint. In regard to the above sir's petition to proffer some entertaining excerpt, some comic citation, some redeeming rhetoric. I shall rise to the occasion:
Dialogue between Ignatius and his mother as follows;
"Oh, my God," Ignatius said, "you have powder all over your dress, although that is probably one of Mrs. Battaglia's beauty hints."
"Why you always knocking Santa, Ignatius?"
"She appears to have been knocked a bit in her life already. Up rather than down. If she ever nears me, however, the direction will be reversed."
"Ignatius!"
"She also brings to mind the vulgarism 'knockers.'"
"Santa's a grammaw. You oughta be ashamed."
Not the greatest exemplum of Toole's literary trenchancy, (or genius for that matter) but I'm quite fond of it nonetheless.
Hopefully that clever little excerpt will afford you all a change of heart.
Although...
Perhaps there is some veracity throughout the minority after all.
There's two sides to every story, and, in this particular story's composition, Toole did resolve to take his own life shortly thereafter. Food for thought, if nothing more.
Anyway, my rating remains as stands, abiding and true.
And to Ignatius, the green cap mother; your 'blue and yellow eyes', your 'worldview', your 'theology and perhaps geometry', your 'value judgments', your 'Dr. Nut', 'Fortuna' and her fateful 'spinnings', your constant and incessantly frivolous 'procurement' of 'something to eat', your 'taste and decency', and your fear of 'perversion' and the 'blighted bourgeois' (relative to your Medieval (Boethius induced) philosophy) will live on in my heart, in perpetuity. I salute you, Ignatius J. Reilly.
And your father as well;
"I suspect that I am the result of a particularly weak conception on the part of my father. His sperm was probably emitted in some offhand manner."
And your creator, John Kennedy Toole, who squandered his talent and left us at a young 34.
I suspect that my overt justification will afflict those of differing convictions with pangs of contrition and tears of remorse.
Credit where credit is due: Thanks Mr. Toole, for posthumously making my day!
Book Review: A Twisted Classic
Summary: 5 Stars
A Confederacy of Dunces is one of those books you could read several times in a row and each time it would grow progressively funnier, like a wine grows progressively more flavorful. It is one of those books you could flip through, find a random passage to read, and immediately find yourself laughing. It is a hilarious story, to be certain, but the greatest thing about it isn't necessarily its abundant humor. The greatest thing about it is the genuine literary power it contains. It isn't just about cheap laughs. It's a novel, a profoundly well told story that exposes the extraordinary talent of its author as much as the author's sense of humor.
The main character, Ignatius J Reilly, is the spoiled, arrogant, pompous result of bad parenting and too much free time. He fancies himself a scholarly intellectual, capable of more scholastic achievements and philosophical breakthroughs than anyone else in New Orleans, when in reality he is an unemployed, frustrated college dropout whose only real passion is the lute. Some of the book's more hilarious moments are the confrontations between Ignatius and his mother, whom he still lives with at the tender age of 35. His mother, having decided that Ignatius's overwhelming lack of motivation is beyond her control, is discovering life again. She's going out, having fun, meeting people - destroying her worldview, as Ignatius would say. And Ignatius, having decided that the world is utterly incapable of digesting his gargantuan intellect, is flailing in a string of bad jobs and failed attempts at manuscripts. Ignatius and his mother are prone to having massive arguments, so loud that the neighbors will shout through their living room windows at them, that usually end in Ignatius locking himself in his room with his lute and his wounded ego for hours on end.
While the story has a host of amusing characters, such as Patrolman Mancuso (determined to bust Ignatius on no grounds other than just general stupidity) and Levy Pants (Ignatius's disgruntled boss), the real enchantment of the story comes from something deeper, something stronger and maybe even tragic. Ignatius cannot find his place in the world and his mother has lost all hope. The city they live in is deteriorating, and even if its troubles are depicted in a comical manner, they are still present. The book may be a comedy, but it has the heart of a tragedy. As we discover at the end of the story, Ignatius is lonelier and even more lost than anyone could realize.