A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
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Book Reviews of A Confederacy of Dunces
Book Review: My new best friend
Summary: 5 Stars
At some point in his masterpiece "A Confederacy of Dunces", writer John Kennedy Toole quotes Macaulay who says that "a great writer is the friend and benefactor of his readers". Having that in mind, Toole is such a great writer that he should be the best friend of his readers. It is virtually impossible to write about this novel without talking about its writers sad destiny. Toole never saw his work published, and like Walker Percy says in the famous introduction it is a pitty that its creator is not alive to see the success of his writing.
"A Confederacy of Dunces" has one of the most important and memorable characters of North American literature. Flat and flatulent Ignatius J. Reilly in an unforgettable creation. So are his companions --like his mother, Officer Mancuso, Darlene, Santa Bataglia and Jones, to name a few.
This book is the kind love-or-hate novel -- there is no in between. Either the reader starts laughing from page one and love it, or he/she finds it bore from the beginning and put it down. Those who embark on Toole's journey will be only pleased to find more laughs until the end of the book.
Toole has a special awareness for dialogues. Much of the narrative moves through its characters lips. There are, of course, descriptions, digressions and all devices used in literature, but as a matter of fact, it is the dialogue that keeps the narrative going. And if the writer didn't have a special talent for it, the book would be a mess. The conversations are sharp, funny and witty.
On the other pole are Ignatius's text from a book he's been writing. His texts can be at the same time funny, weird and tender. If at one point we think his ideas are far-fetched, we can't deny there is much truth behind many things he says. And he was living in the early sixties. Probably Ignatius wouldn't survive to the end of century, to the vulgarization of culture etc.
With "A Confederacy of Dunces" we laugh of our own intellectual misery. This was the best advice he could have given us. Ignatius is weird, but there is a little of him inside of everyone, and that's not a bad thing.
Toole suffered from the same malady that he uses in his epigraph from a Jonathan Swift's essay that goes like every time a true genius appears, dunces are all in confederacy against him. The prove that this writer was a genius is that he never got his book published -- indeed, dunces were trying to sabotage him.
Book Review: favorite comic novel of all-time
Summary: 5 Stars
If I'm being sent to Angola (the prison or the nation) and get to bring just two books? As of today, I go with Confederacy and an ESV Bible (we'll make it the Reformation Study Bible in black leather).
After 805 reviews here, I have nothing new to add. Just joining my voice to the recommendation list, and sharing my own small experience with this wonderful book.
I was up til 4:30am reading it last night and only got to p. 39, between the laughter, and wanting to re-read a well crafted paragraph over and over. Kind of like the very first time you popped R.E.M. 'Murmur' into your CD player -- you just had to listen to each sng a hundred times.
The interesting part to this experience last night -- I had just heard a talk by Anne Lamott about her Xian faith and being an artists. Wonderful stuff. Met her afterwards and bought her new acclaimed book, Plan B. Well, I didn't even crack the cover of the (certainly amazing) Lamott book all night, because that would require pulling me away from Confederacy.
Take David Brooks' DNA and splice its best parts with Flannery O'Connor's. Add in some Jaques Maritain and P.J. O'Rourke. Take the child that results and drop him into Uptown New Orleans -- when science can achieve this we may finally get another comic novel approaching this. Until then, we have Confederacy, and nothing else.
As has been noted in several of these reviews, Toole was a college instructor in New Orleans in the late 60s. He wrote this novel and saw it rejected by all the major publishers. He killed himself in response, age 32. So his mother took the manuscript and forced it upon Walker Percy in 1976, who thought she was silly, but gave a look to the first page only because he rashly promised her he would. He said he knew quickly he was reading the best comic novel of the 20th century. Through his intervention it was finally published in 1980, more than ten years after Toole's death. It immediately won the Pulitzer.
Its main character Ignatius Reilly is a New Orleanian freak through and through (his sole bus ride to Baton Rouge made him vomit). He may be the only 300 pound sloth in history to wear an undersized lumberjack shirt on Canal St. Percy has called him a mad Thomas Hardy, a fat Don Quixote, a perverse Thomas Aquinas, all rolled into one.
Disclaimer: It is roughly R-rated. Not good for many homeschooled 13 year olds.
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.
Book Review: In Response to the Negative Reviews
Summary: 5 Stars
Personally, I am dumbfounded at some of the claims of the more, shall we say, uptight reviewers found on this page. To hold an opinion which is contrary to most others' is, of course, perfectly fine, but to claim that those who like the book are simply following suit, that we are simply seeing the "emperor's new clothes" so as not to be thought stupid, is an affront to the intelligence of the thousands and thousands of readers who have enjoyed this book. A few things; this is not a comedy in the way an Elmore Leonard novel, or a Douglas Adamas novel, is a comedy. The comedy is not outright -- that is to say that this is not a novel built around jokes and one-liners -- but that the comedy comes from the characters, the dialogue and the overall outrageousness of its situations. It is also a misconception that a great main character must be indentifiable with the reader. The point of the novel is that Ignatius is NOT identifiable to a normal person, just as he cannot identify with normal society. Were his convictions easy to indentify with, was his position on society easy to swallow and his speech more coloquial he would not be Ignatius J. Reilly. He is, in fact, one of the snidest, most self-deluded characters I have ever read had the pleasure to read. He treats his mother terribly, his medieval philosophies sound like the ramblings of an imbecile, and his excuses and complaints could, if they were realized in life, drive someone insane. It is his good-natured intentions, though, his self-delusions that his shortcomings are in fact blessings and the sheer rediculous nature of his pompousness that makes him such a comic gem of a character. That we who find this to be true are being compared to the peasants in the age old fable of the emperor's new clothing seems to say a wealth about those who make such claims. Is it not enough to state one's opinion? Must one put oneself on a literary pedestal, insulting the intelligence of anyone who disagrees with you? Because you didn't "get it" does not mean that there was nothing to "get." We got it. And we who did are in agreement; those new clothes the emperor's sporting are looking damn good.
In summary, there is a reason this book won the Pulitzer Prize and it's not because the judges were too scared to admit they didn't like it. It's clever, well-written, fast-paced, absorbing and absurd.
Oh, and it's extremely funny, as well.
Book Review: "There are wheels within wheels here ..."
Summary: 5 Stars
While the title of the review is borrowed from Miller's The Crucible (Penguin Classics), the metaphor works for this brilliant piece of literature as well. Set in New Orleans, _A Confederacy of Dunces_ follows the misadventures of Ignatius J. Reilly, an over-educated young man who lives with his mother and seeks to avoid work at all costs. The variety of situations he finds himself in, and the colorful cast of characters who cross his path (and who cross each-other's paths) make up the bulk of the plot. This, however, does not do this magnificent, laugh-out-loud funny book justice.
Ignatius is a modern-day Quixote, a man whose head is full of medieval literature and history, who sees himself as a 20th century Boethius, helplessly spun on the Wheel of Fortune. He is lazy, obnoxious, compulsive and one of the most memorable, unique and truly humorous characters I have read. With each misadventure, he adds to his "masterpiece", writing on Big Chief tablets the random accounting of his daily travails and rants about the modern world, certain he is a misunderstood genius. Maybe he is. With each job Ignatius finds (and subsequently loses), Toole introduces the reader to a new caste of characters, who in turn spin off on their own misadventures, often times crossing paths unnoticed with others whom we have been previously introduced. The intricacy of the plot is similar to Tolstoy in its complexity. Of course, I never laughed so hard reading Tolstoy as I did with _Confederacy of Dunces_.
And this is how the wheel turns, each character's sub-plot in turn influencing the sub-plot of another and so on and so on, "wheels within wheels" - the writing and organization of the story and its sub-stories is mind-boggling. What marks this as a particular piece of genius is how all the apparently loose ends are eventually tied together with the book's conclusion. I have only one caveat: the book was given as a gift to read on the airplane as I made my first visit to New Orleans. (What a wonderful city!) Had I not been familiar with the location and haunts constantly referenced, I would have liked the book less, I think. Having met some of the residents of New Orleans, I enjoyed the book even more - as more than a few were reminiscent of characters Ignatius meets. Highly recommended.