A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
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Book Reviews of A Confederacy of Dunces
Book Review: Painfully awkward but intensely funny
Summary: 5 Stars
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
Published 1981
338 pages
Classic; Pulitzer; Picaresque; FITG
4.5/5 stars
Source: Library
Summary: I've tried describing this before to my friends but I don't think I'm doing a very good job. Basically Ignatius J Reilly is a lazy eccentric who is forced to get a job leading to a series of adventures involving many Characters.
Thoughts: I was excited to read this because it's one of my dad's favorite books and he's recommended it to me before. While I can appreciate its strong points, I don't think it's one of my favorites. For one thing, I prefer a main character I love and would want to hang out with. Ignatius Reilly had many interesting characteristics but I would never want to meet him. On the one hand, he's obsessed with the Middle Ages and thinks things would be better with an enlightened monarchy (I'm not saying he's wrong what with the way things are...) He is very educated with a graduate degree and he speaks far beyond the comprehension of the people around, which is very funny to read. On the other hand, he lies, he's selfish, and he's cruel to his mama among other offenses. So not someone I'd want to meet but someone who is a Character.
My favorite part of the book was how the disparate characters and earlier events tied together-I mean it's perfect. It's not like crazy coincidences as Dickens does but instances that logically follow the previous events. The part I didn't like was how intensely awkward some scenes were for me to read. I could not have read this book all in one go because I had to take breaks and distance myself from what was happening.
It's been defined as a picaresque novel which I always associate with Don Quixote. It's been a while since I've read that but I remember some of the occurrences escalating in a similar way so I can see it. For example, Ignatius has a simple office job before he decides that he will organize the workers at a factory which almost leads to a riot. It's amazing.
Overall: Intensely awkward at times, very funny at times with the perfect ending.
Cover: I found this cover weird at first but it actually makes perfect sense after reading the book.
Book Review: Why they misunderstand
Summary: 5 Stars
This is truly a great book. Humor is much underrated in our lives. The ability to laugh at our selves is important. This is not a book of flowery words. This is a humorously philosophical look at our selves and our condition not a didactic diatribe. For that it deserves serious consideration and respect.Ignatius J. Reilly is not a hero. He is an exaggeration. He is both rigorously, uncompromisingly correct and absurdly tragic at the same time. We have met the enemy and he is us.
This book, with its protagonist so heroically intellectual and pathetically tragic, is an exaggerated mirror of our own situation in life. In addition Ignatius is so extremely and precisely developed in his own philosophy, no one could possibly understand him. In truth we are all just as unique as Ignatius J. Riley is but we rarely notice our uniqueness or come to grips with our isolation. We are all misunderstood and frustrated with our inability to express ourselves and our inability to pursuade others of what we know is right.
This is not a book about heroes with a happy ending. There is no didactic, simple message here about good vs. evil. Those people, who read this book and reject it because they don't like the characters, fail to see the point, that we are all a crazy mixed up mess of good and bad. There can be no simple message in the mess. We are after all... human, we are fallible. We are stupid about some things, smart about others. We succeed and we fail. We are all industrious and lazy to some degree. We are locked into this absurd existence, but to be human and aware and alive is to endure our absurdity with glee and joy of life wherever we can get it even if it's just a guilty hotdog, to laugh at it all. Because we are all part of it, and if we could stand back and look at it from the outside, we would see it is wonderful.
This is a book for beatniks during the rightwing, conformist '50s. A book for anyone who has ever known they were right about something despite being a minority of one in a crowd of thousands of idiots. A book for flawed people who can still be amused by their flaws. A book for outsiders who have retained their dignity in dirty clothes.
So just read it and take it for what it is. Enjoy the crazies and clowns while you still can.
Book Review: Unforgetable!
Summary: 5 Stars
Toole's book is an ambitious work of comedy, highlighted by one of the most memorable literary creations ever, Ignatius J. Reilly.Reilly is an unforgettable character, a self-described anachronism who dresses in a plaid flannel shirt and a green hunter's cap, all the while bemoaning the loss of "taste and decency" in modern times, equating the breakdown of the Medieval system with the ascendancy of chaos and lunacy. He fills notebooks with vitriol detailing his contempt for the regular dregs of society, imbibes and belches up countless bottles of Dr. Nut, and likens his mother to an adolescent floozy. A portly man, he lounges, eats, and farts constantly, his sedentary life interrupted only by a need to find a job.
Reilly's escapades as a working man who never works are simply hilarious. His first job is at a pants factory, where he files away papers by throwing them in the garbage, ignores his boss, and befriends an elderly senile employee named Miss Trixie. After being fired for planning an uprising in the warehouse, Reilly finds a job that is perfect for him--pushing a hot dog cart through downtown New Orleans, dressed in a pirate's costume. When his hot dog cart is stolen, Ignatius smartly quips, "The human desire for food and sex is relatively equal. If there are armed rapes, why should there not be armed hot dog thefts?"
While the character of Ignatius Reilly is undoubtedly exaggerated and perhaps even absurd, Toole uses Reilly to render his indictment of contemporary society, the novel becoming a vehicle in which hoi polloi are relegated to the role of the dunce, forever confined to a world of indecency. Ignatius is the unconventional hero, tragically confined to the fringes of society.
The great tragedy of the novel, however, is author John Kennedy Toole's inability to heed the advice of his own protagonist. In troubling times, Ignatius Reilly, ever devoted to medieval philosophy, would have reminded Toole of Boethius's rota fortunae. Wait long enough and the wheel of fortune will turn your way. Tragically, in his depths of despair, Toole ended his own life, unable to wait for that final turn. Along with this novel, I'd like to recommend another quick Amazon pick: The Losers' Club by Richard Perez
Book Review: A Nonfiction Masterpiece
Summary: 5 Stars
The fact is that we New Orleanians all have known Ignatious Reillys . . . and their mothers! In fact, none of these characters are drawn any larger than reality in "da quahtahs" and "da nint wahd."
Ya gotta live there a while to understand but this novel was a snapshot of the kind of misfit that New Orleans specializes in. For the most part, these kind of people find their niches in New Orleans' most arcane troposphere and somehow cobble together a rich and interesting life. Every once in a while someone comes along who is so outre that even New Orleans doesn't know what to do with 'em. John Kennedy Toole was one of those lost souls. Fortunately, the world received a fantastic gift in the master piece "A Confederacy of Dunces". You've got to read it to understand.
Whatever you do, do NOT get excited and rush out to buy Toole's only other published work, The Neon Bible. It was a travesty, fought tooth and nail by executor Dr. Kenneth Holditch, forced by the courts in order to provide revenue for greedy cousins. The Neon Bible was a piece of half-baked juvenalia that Toole himself never tried to publish (it wasn't even finished). It, as opposed to Confederacy, is practically unreadable.
All told, "A Confederacy of Dunces" should be required reading material before landing at Moissant Airport. Read and laugh. Then, read and use it as your streetmap of the Quarter. Either way, enjoy this flash of brilliance from a slender taper that blazed for a moment in time . . . before giving way to the darkness . . . but, in that moment, how he blazed!
10/13/05 Let me add that I have now listened to C of D on audiobook and re-loved it all over again! The narrator is clearly not from New Orleans---mangles an accent or two, mispronounces street names,keeps saying "Sahnta"---but generally he does it justice and does a great job with the pomposity of Ignatious. Having read many of these reviews now, I would say that either you get it or you don't. Love it or hate it, read (or listen to it) and you WILL learn something real about New Orleans. I also think that post-Katrina, we can know some things from this book about why things turned out the way they did.
Book Review: I have read it over and over
Summary: 5 Stars
This is my favorite book. I first read it while travelling by train, and the passengers were so annoyed by my constant giggling that they shooed me out of the coach. I had to finish it on the dining coach.
My favorite character is Ignatius; however, I also love Irene, Miss Trixie, Miss Annie, Santa Battaglia,and even the stupid Mancuso. All of them are unbelievable funny in their stubbornness, foolishness, egotism, and absurdity.
Ignatius is a hopeless case, but who isn't? Whether people admit it or not, eveybody is somehow a hopeless case. Believing otherwise is delusion. The only purpose of life is to ackowledge that we, as a species, are a tumor, a blob of thick and sticky self-righteousness deserving of somebody as crazy and lucid as Ignatius who manages to prick holes in our blob. That is why he is an inspiring character. He is here to rub salt in our wounds. He teaches us that there is no limits to our delusion. We only have to look around us: everybody lies and cheats in order to accomplish his goals, and at the same time everyone wants to convince himself that he is right, that he is a wonderful human being. That is why motivational speakers are so successful and inspirational literature sells so well. Nonsense! If people were lucid enough, they would recognize that they have only two choices: stop breathing altogether or laugh at themselves and at their shortcomings and stop taking themselves so seriously.
My favorite paragraph of the book appears almost at the end of the second chapter: "When Fortuna spins you downward, go out to a movie and get more out of life. Ignatius was about to say this to himself; then he remembered that he went to the movies almost every night, no matter which way Fortuna was spinning."
That is exactly what humans do, even though they fail to acknowledge it. Nonetheless, Ignatius has something, a kind of candor and idealism that most of people nowadays lack: he believes that the Middle Ages was a better time, and even though deep down inside we know that he is intelligent enough to recognize that this idea is misguided, in his madness he behaves as the champion of that cause. And that is what saves him from vulgarity.