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Title: A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole ISBN: 0-8071-2606-3 Publisher: Louisiana State University Press Pub. Date: 01 May, 2000 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.37 (647 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Don't believe the hype. Well, believe some of it.
Comment: One thing must be made perfectly clear from the start -- this is an extremely fun book to read. It's funny, it's paced well; it's a terrific summer read. That said, however, I don't think this is quite the Great American Novel the critics have declared it to be. My suspicion is that many of them are more excited about HOW it came to be than WHAT it came to be. Just as music critics dream of breaking some obscure-but-magical band they just happened to hear in a small-town bar, this work -- written by a talented-but-troubled young man, forgotten for years after his suicide, discovered by his mother is some musty cabinet, dropped on the desk of a skeptical English professor, begrudgingly read, then found to be a masterpiece -- proved too tempting; it's TOO perfect. So go into this knowing that the book's legacy probably has as much to with its lavish praise as its content.
I found the book to be a bit like a kiddie pool -- colorful, fun, inviting, but, while broad enough to hold many characters, ultimately very shallow. Certainly, many of the characters were given magnificent, hilarious dialogue (although Burma's constant "Hey!"s and "Whoa!"s baffled me; was he being shot at, did he have Tourette's?), but they weren't given much life; we never got to know them. Miss Trixie, Lana Lee and Mrs. Levy, for instance, were given a hook line and esentially repeated it ad nauseum for the rest of the novel. And once the roster was divided into good guys and bad guys, the book marched on to a fairly predictable end.
Even our enormous, over-educated, cripplingly neurotic, eternally belching anti-hero Ignatius was ultimately little more than a vehicle for Toole's amazing monologues. While we were given tiny glimpses of his humanity, an awful high school experience, his heartbreak over his departed dog, his secret love for the movies, we never learned what made him tick. WHY was he so rabidly averse to sex, obsessed with pre-Renaisannce history, undermotivated and fearful? What in his childhood or college experience molded him, changed him?
That said, though, the book IS pretty darned funny and has some of the most twisted twists ever. Ignatius' near-success in organizing a full-blown religious crusade with a pack of bemused, semi-literate factory workers had me rolling, and his, er... unique plan to inflitrate the armed forces to bring about a new era of world peace had to be one of the most hilariously fiendish concepts in recent memory -- it seemed as though it actually MIGHT work. All of the character plots tied together beautifully and, although their eventual outcomes are fairly obvious, the roads which led them there are anything but.
So know that this is not one of the greats, nor is there a Big Message, other than that desperate self-preservation will generally triumph over either secular humanism or staunch religious morality. Know also, though, that you will have a heck of a good time reading this. Perhaps not a leather-bound tome to be positioned among the classics in a college library, but a great addition to the pile of paperbacks in your rented beach house.
Rating: 5
Summary: An unheralded masterpiece
Comment: This is the kind of book that a person rarely buys on his/her own inspiration. It isn't a New York Times bestseller. It isn't one in a series. It isn't by a well-known author. And the first character the reader encounters is loud, tremendously overweight, strangely dressed and possibly mentally ill man who doesn't immediately arouse the typical reader's sympathies. If you skipped the prologue and just began reading the first page or two while standing in a bookstore, you might not even be impressed. But read just a little while longer and author Toole will have sunk his hooks into you. This book is an odd masterpiece. It's a comic tour-de-force whose characters shine. It's Seinfeld set in the seedy side of New Orleans. It's what would happen if comedian Lewis Black finally snapped and moved from Manhattan to the Creole Capital. It's absurd, but it is even more funny.
If you don't believe me, just read the prologue someday. Walker Percy recounts how this manuscript first came to his attention. He discusses how he tried and tried to get out of having to read it. Eventually he decided that he'd just read a few pages so that he could honestly say that it was no good and be done with it. But after picking up the script, he writes that he first endured a "sinking feeling" when he realized it was better than he thought; then later, he had a "prickle of interest"; finally, he writes, "surely it was not possible that it was so good."
But it is that good: it won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. The tragedy is that John Kennedy Toole isn't a better known author -- he killed himself in 1969. This book certainly is a fantastic way of keeping his memory alive.
Rating: 4
Summary: A Confederacy of Dunces
Comment: gnatius J Reilly is fat. Ignatius is lazy. He is slothful, arrogant, condescending, self-obsessed, self-absorbed, incapable of empathy, calculating, ignorant, deluded and did I mention obese? After all but causing a car accident thanks to his tendency to 'aid' people with their driving, his mother demands that the unemployed, thirty-year old get a job. He is horrified, certain that gainful employment will disrupt the sporadic work he does on his masterpiece. And of course there is the problem with his valve.
So he finds himself a job. He breezes into the Levy Pants company and demands more pay, later starting time, and then spends his days carefully painting a cross to cheer everyone up. Then he incites a riot. Then he gets fired.
This first job sets a lot of events in motion. Characters are introduced and frequently we enter their lives to see what is happening. This has the effect of diluting Ignatius' presence from the story - but only slightly - however the compromise here is that we know it will all tie in together - we just don't know how.
There is Jones, the black floor-sweeper at the Night of Joy, quite possibly the worst strip-club in all of New Orleans. Mr Levy, the disillusioned son of the original - and best, if we can believe his wife - Mr Levy. George, the mysterious package deliverer. Mancuso, the down on his luck detective, and more. Excluding Jones, these characters all have sub-par development as character, and serve mostly as caricatures. This goes even more so for the lesser characters I have not mentioned.
Events do tie themselves up a little too neatly. There is a sense that every little action, no matter how inconsequential, builds towards a whole, which doesn't really reflect the reality of life, but this is a moot point. Ignatius is an amazing character, so awful, arrogant and just plain mean to every other person imaginable that you will have to fall in love. Who cannot enjoy his Working Boy Journals? Or his love/hate relationship with Myrna? Don't necessarily read this book for plot - which, though strong, plays out like a 1 hour crime special - read it for Ignatius.
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Title: The Neon Bible by John Kennedy Toole ISBN: 0802132073 Publisher: Grove Press Pub. Date: 01 May, 1990 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: Ignatius Rising: The Life of John Kennedy Toole by Rene Pol Nevils, Deborah George Hardy ISBN: 0807126802 Publisher: Louisiana State University Press Pub. Date: 01 June, 2001 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: The Moviegoer by Walker Percy ISBN: 0375701966 Publisher: Vintage Books USA Pub. Date: 01 May, 1998 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: Managing Ignatius: The Lunacy of Lucky Dogs and Life in the Quarter by Jerry E. Strahan ISBN: 0767903242 Publisher: Broadway Books Pub. Date: 16 February, 1999 List Price(USD): $19.00 |
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Title: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers ISBN: 0375725784 Publisher: Vintage Books USA Pub. Date: 13 February, 2001 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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