A Confederacy of Dunces

<em> <a style="font-style: italic;" href=[...]</a> </em>by <a href="[...]</a> is funny, wise, and as close to a perfect novel as you’re likely to find. Protagonist Ignatius C. Reilly is a bloated buffoon, a man-baby who lives with his mother, has a troubled digestive valve that causes him to burp and fart with great frequency, and possesses one of the most “unique” worldviews you’re likely to find. Ignatius is loaf completely at ease with his loafishness: <blockquote><em>“I dust a bit,” Ignatius told the policeman. “In addition, I am at the moment writing a lengthy indictment against our century. When my brain begins to reel from my literary labors, I make an occasional cheese dip.”</em></blockquote> Ignatius is like a giant child when he considers his career options and argues with his mother: <blockquote><em>I suspect that something like a newspaper route would be rather agreeable.</em></blockquote> <blockquote><em> “I dare you to come out in that shredded nightgown and get me!” Ignatius answered defiantly and stuck out his massive pink tongue.</em></blockquote> Above all, <em>A Confederacy of Dunces</em> is <em>funny</em>. Laugh out loud is an overused phrase, but <em>COD</em> will make you LOL for realz, yo. The situations are so absurd, the characters so odd, and the dialogue veers between biting satire punctuated by unexpected blasts of pee-your-pants profanity. <blockquote><em>“Go dangle your withered parts over the toilet!” Ignatius screamed savagely. Miss Trixie shuffled away.</em></blockquote> No mater what the problem, Ignatius always finds a way to blame others. <blockquote><em>“Employers sense in me a denial of their values.” He rolled over onto his back. “They fear me. I suspect that they can see that I am forced to function in a century which I loathe.</em></blockquote> <blockquote><em>You must realize the fear and hatred which my </em>weltanschauung<em> instills in people.</em></blockquote> <blockquote><em>He twisted his face into a mask of suffering. There was no use fighting Fortuna until the cycle was over. “You realize, of course, that this is all your fault.</em><em> </em></blockquote> <blockquote><em> “You’re full of bulls***.” </em> <em>“I? The incident is sociologically valid. The blame rests upon our society.”</em></blockquote> Sometimes <em>COD</em> goes for screwball comedy and slapstick. Taken as a whole, <em>COD</em> is the mother of all farces. When he’s not avoiding work or fighting with his mother, Ignatius plots against Myrna, a radical student he once attended classes with. The romantic ending of <em>COD</em> is anticipated but still manages to be unexpectedly satisfying. <blockquote><em>Dr. Talc idly wondered if they (</em>Iggy and Myrna)<em> had married each other. Each certainly deserved the other.</em></blockquote> Through Myrna’s letters we see she has true insight into Ignatius’ personality: <blockquote><em>This “automobile accident” is a new crutch to help you make excuses for your meaningless, impotent existence.</em></blockquote> <blockquote><em>A good, explosive orgasm would cleanse your being and bring you out of the shadows.</em></blockquote> <blockquote><em>Great Oedipus bonds are encircling your brain and destroying you</em></blockquote> <blockquote><em>Ignatius, a very bad crack-up is on the way. You must do something. Even volunteer work at a hospital would snap you out of your apathy,</em> <em>The valve closes because it thinks it is living in a dead organism. Open your heart, Ignatius, and you will open your valve. </em></blockquote> <em> </em> Behind his absurdity, Ignatius is sad and lonely, a sorrow that stems from his isolationism: <blockquote><em>We both exist outside the inner realm of American society. Myrna was, you see, terribly engaged in her society; I, on the other hand, older and wiser, was terribly dis-engaged.</em></blockquote> <blockquote><em>I really have had little to do with them, for I mingle with my peers or no one, and since I have no peers, I mingle with no one.</em></blockquote> <blockquote><em>I don’t dance. I never dance. I have never danced in my life.</em></blockquote> <em>COD</em> is also a love letter to Toole’s native New Orleans: <blockquote><em>Patrolman Mancuso inhaled the moldy scent of the oaks and thought, in a romantic aside, that St. Charles Avenue must be the loveliest place in the world.</em></blockquote> <blockquote><em>New Orleans is, on the other hand, a comfortable metropolis which has a certain apathy and stagnation which I find inoffensive. At least its climate is mild.</em> <em>The balconies of the old buildings hung over my head like dark branches in an allegorical forest of evil.</em></blockquote> I won’t get into the tragic personal history of author John Kenndy Toole. The story behind his career and the publication of <em>COD</em> is itself an impossible tale of heartbreaking genius. But the toxic mother-son relationship at the heart of this novel certainly is rife with autobiographical elements. Ms. Reilly laments Ignatius’ weak work ethic. <blockquote><em> “My heart’s broke.”</em> <em>“Ain’t he writing something?” </em> <em>“Some foolishness nobody never gonna feel like reading.”</em></blockquote> Fortunately, the real-life Thelma Toole felt differently about her son’s work. -30-

This is a well written book with some zany characters; not the least of whom is its main character, Ignatius Reilly. This book could have been hilarious in the way that Joseph Heller's Catch 22 was, except that Tool attempted to make his characters a little too dark. After all, this book is comedic fiction, so there should have been a lightheartedness to it which I found all but absent. Moreover, while author Toole does a credible job of developing his characters, the book itself is held back by its overtly depressing nature. Toole for all of his brilliance as an academic and teacher, just did not seem to be able embody enough humor in his characters to overcome their darkness. And this is unfortunate, because much of this book reveals just how creative and talented a writer John Toole was. However, unlike Catch 22 - which to this day remains my benchmark for comedic novels - I found that I had to force myself to read A Confederacy Of Dunces. Whereas, Catch 22 has such a natural flow to it which made it impossible to put down. Joseph Heller's characters may have had their dark sides, however, they were so funny that it was easy to overlook them. In fact, they were more like cartoon characters that Heller brought to life, while Toole's characters start off in a similar way, yet become so depressing, that much of the humor in this book is overshadowed by this depression. Moreover, as a reader you begin to sense the weight of this depression, and it can make reading the book a chore at times. Furthermore, while it is at times injected with the author's dry sense of humor and considerable wit, A Confederacy Of Dunces is in fact a very dark comedy, which was obviously written from the darkest recesses of a tortured soul. Toole's own mind. Given that this book was first published more than a decade after John Kennedy Toole committed suicide, one must wonder if it was the very darkness within his own psyche that he could not overcome; which resulted in his taking his own life at the age of 31; just as his characters, as humorous as they are at times, can't seem to overcome their own demons. A Confederacy Of Dunces is certainly a worthwhile read, written by a very talented man who is hopefully now at peace. However, how it won a Noble Prize for comedic fiction is as much of a mystery to this reader as is why Catch 22 didn't win a Noble Prize for this literary genre. Recommended with the aforesaid caveats.

You’ve got to read A Confederacy of Dunces to believe it. Ignatius J. Reilly, the novel’s unique and utterly repugnant protagonist, is a slovenly, self-aggrandizing genius who lumbers through life with a mix of delusional grandeur and caustic wit. He’s a spectacle of excess—physically, intellectually, and emotionally—whose every misadventure, from his hot-dog-vending schemes to his tirades against modernity, is a masterclass in cringe-inducing absurdity. You can’t look away, turning pages to see what outrageous, self-inflicted disaster he’ll stumble into next. This book is the wretched refuse and psychotic reflection of Catcher in the Rye, a darkly comedic, unapologetically unhinged cousin that takes J.D. Salinger’s blueprint and douses it in New Orleans sweat and grease. Where Holden Caulfield is a brooding, alienated teenager wrestling with the phoniness of the world, Ignatius is a grotesque, overgrown man-child, waging war against a society he deems beneath his medievalist ideals. Holden’s rebellion is introspective, laced with vulnerability and a yearning for connection; Ignatius’s is bombastic, fueled by arrogance and a perverse glee in his own chaos. If Catcher is a melancholic lament for lost innocence, Dunces is a raucous, satirical assault on propriety, reveling in its protagonist’s refusal to conform—or bathe. Yet both novels share a core of defiance, capturing misfits who rail against a world they can’t (or won’t) fit into, making Ignatius a kind of warped, funhouse-mirror reflection of Holden. John Kennedy Toole’s masterpiece weaves this larger-than-life antihero through a chaotic tapestry of New Orleans’ underbelly, where a cast of misfits—hapless cops, scheming barflies, and exasperated employers—collide in gloriously disastrous ways. It’s a satirical gut-punch, equal parts hilarious and unsettling, that thrives on its grotesque brilliance. You’ll laugh, you’ll grimace, and you’ll never forget it.

If you're looking for a book that you don't have to decipher, this is for you. An obstinate jerk's misadventures with a collection of freaks & ne'er do wells thrown in for laughs.

Looking for an American Literary Classic? Discard those notions of "Old Man and the Sea" or "Tom Sawyer" or the like. This is the greatest book written by an American author, and one of the greatest ever written. It's on the level of Don Quixote (indeed, the main character, Ignatius, could be compared to Don Quixote), on the level of any great novel ever written. what makes it so great? The comedy of Ignatius, the philosophical, obese, lazy man who thinks to highly of himself and who any Native New Orleans resident could compare to someone they once met (I was born and raised down there. I can think of at least 3 people myself.) There's also the tradgedy of poor Mrs Reily, the vagrant Jones who needs to work as a porter to evade jail time, and the depressing Officer Mancuso who is looked down on so by his commanding officer. There's also the realism of the city, or indeed, the country depicted here: The failing Levy factory, The sleazy Night of Joy bar, and the strange residents of The Big Easy who interact with each other so comically throughout the book. This blend of such ideals react to make a classic novel. Why must our high school students be forced to deal with the dated ideals of "Huckleberry Finn", ecspecially when it (and other novels) are passed as comedies? Although Confederacy of Dunces is 40 years old (published around 20 years ago), it still pertains greatly to today's social ideals and is still hilarious. This is the kind of comedy and realism that should be passed through the teenage mind. Still, it's for everyone. Yes, It does pertain more to New Orleans residents/natives, but everyone will find parallels with their own lives in this novel. They will find great amounts of humor through the protagonist and the people he affects. And they will, indeed, find a great novel that can be treasured for ages.

Enjoyed this book more than I expected. So funny….

“It is a scene which combines the worst of Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Fritz Lang’s Metropolis; it is mechanized Negro slavery; it represents progress which the Negro has made from picking cotton to tailoring it … My valve threw in a hearty response.” This is from page 130. Ignatius Reilly writes for his grand designs of social upheaval through a more sophisticated lens than he can otherwise be seen through. In this glimpse can also be seen the satire of John Kennedy Toole, but then again the short shelf life of well-meaning political correctness. On the other side of the book, Levy Pants is owned by a beleaguered and himself well-meaning and hen-pecked husband, Gus Levy. And Jones is illiterate, irreverent, and as stereotyped as New Orleans can be, but because he works for below minimum wage, the alternative being arrested as a “vagran,” he is a hero who exposes a pornography ring. The genius of A Confederacy of Dunces is its limited appeal to only the most literate readers. To the regular summer reader, Ignatius would be too fat to be funny, Jones too lazy, and New Orleans police would not make favorable headlines near the end. The racial sensibilities keep the wheels turning within the plot, introducing new characters and surprising one-liners, forcing strange bedfellows in a book alongside Hispanic strippers, senile retirees, and bitchy bosses, but popular, current sensibility would not allow for so many laughs now. The best reminder of this is that Walker Percy wrote the introduction. This is the Old South, the Easy Rider version that makes distinguishing hippies from rednecks from tourists so fuzzy; this was a message of equal opportunities and meritocracy preached to a segregated congregation. The book is more visual, or means to be, than most novels. The actions are awkward, the colors are bright, and New Orleans is left to the imagination. The characters are grotesque, the scenes compromising, and the coincidences come from extraordinarily varied points. Sometimes this means pay less attention to the dialogue; sometimes it means a character will take on a roll that reads faster. Trixie, for example, moved from an office which but for the signs was hard to see to a home which but for Mrs. Levy’s board was cleaner but most likely still very tacky. Ignatius ran into Dorian and George and maybe a couple of other bit characters, and the most important note to take was that Ignatius was going to respond with anything that could reflect his delusions of grandeur. His physical comedy was not effective, partly because fat is now too epidemic to be funny. His persistence and neo-idealism, however, is as reviewers say: Faustian, Don Quixote-like. Once Toole forced Ignatius to act, the plot became too fast to be visible, but the ladies from the auxiliary came into a scene with the characters I did know, so there is that magic spark caused by interrelated characters. I had my doubts deep into the novel, but on page 346, I realized confidently that this was all going to tie together like a classic Seinfeld scenario.

What a very strange, and if you get past the first 50 pages, amazing work of fiction. The backstory connected with this book is tragic and the forward that introduces the backstory is itself a moving thing to read. I’m not spoiling any part of the story by sharing that tragically the young man that wrote it killed himself years before this work of genius was published. That thought was always somewhere in my head as I read the pages and was drawn into the world he created with characters that felt so real they’re ridiculous circumstances almost seemed possible. There’s material in here that you can laugh at, and some of that same material that may make one person laugh will make another wince or cry because the author cut so deeply into the personality and pathology of colorful characters in this tale.

Großartig geschriebenes Buch. Unterhaltsame humorvolle Story. Gut beschriebene und intelligent-überlegte Charaktere. Fesselnde und witzige Prosa.

Um pouco manchado nas laterais, afinal, é um livro já antigo, mas sem cheiro de velho, sem rasuras, sem rasgados

'When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.' This quote from Jonathan Swift provides the memorable title of this accomplished and bizarre novel by the hapless John Kennedy Toole, a suicide at the age of thirty-one. There has been considerable speculation since Toole's untimely demise in 1969 about how much his difficulties in publishing his novel contributed to his death. The unconventional relationship between him and his domineering mother has also been closely examined, with many readers perceiving paralells with Ignatius Reilly (the novel's protaganist) and his fictive mother. It is known that Toole's mother obsessively pestered the publishing house to get her son's book into print posthumously. It is less well known that she was equally determined to suppress publication of his only other work, 'The Neon Bible' but neither fact has any bearing on this review, which positively reacts to this young writer's interesting and impressive novel. The story unfolds across fourteen chapters rich in prose and dialogue delivered in authentically reproduced dialects of the time (the 1960s) and the place (New Orleans, US). Toole presents the reader with an arena of offbeat characters, a world teeming with bigoted and blinkered eccentrics, each with their own axe to grind. Throughout the amusingly related shenanigans of these lowlife misfits, Ignatius Reilly is a central presence. He lives with his mother who is lonely and past her best in a cocoon of self-importance unpunctured by her repeated efforts to nag him into assuming an occupation. Her anxiety is fuelled by her fears of lifelong debt, which she feels might result from threatened legal proceedings against her following an accident in which she and Ignatius were involved. The jobs Ignatius gets provide abundant humour and irony, introducing fresh characters with their idiosyncratic weirdness of being and outlook. With his talent for self-alienation and losing jobs, Mrs. Reilly, in desperation, considers having her son committed. But help is at hand for our pompous hero in the form of Myrna Minkoff, the mysterious correspondent we meet early on in the book leading us to read more into their odd relationship than is spelled out for us. This book is original writing from a talent whose development had he survived may have astounded us. If, as seems likely, this title stands alone as his most famous achievement it will not be too bad a thing. Most writers are grateful to be remembered for pretty well any of their books, irrespective of the size of their output and to be remembered for a classic is an honour aqrguably sufficient to offset the tragedy of an author's premature death.

Un libro extraordinario

A la suite d'un héros hors norme on découvert une galerie de portraits savoureux. Le style est brillant donnant voix à chacun des personnage dans une langue dont le vocabulaire la syntaxe et l'orthographe varient pour suivre leurs émotions et nous plonger dans leur psychisme. C'est pathétique hilarant effrayanr en un mot brillant.