Click on a thumbnail to go to Google Books.
Loading... Typerysten salaliitto (original 1980; edition 2010)by John Kennedy Toole, Margit Salmenoja (KääNtäJä)
Work InformationA Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole (1980)
» 67 more 20th Century Literature (123) Favorite Long Books (64) Backlisted (7) Favourite Books (433) Top Five Books of 2018 (126) Books Read in 2021 (133) A Novel Cure (84) Overdue Podcast (10) Books Read in 2023 (296) Best Satire (68) Urban Fiction (6) BBC Big Read (50) Readable Classics (59) Read These Too (3) Summer Reads 2014 (120) Books Read in 2022 (1,738) Fate vs. Free Will (15) SHOULD Read Books! (14) hopes (10) Books Read in 2005 (22) New Orleans (3) My Favourite Books (16) Yet another list (16) Catalog (20) Allie's Wishlist (60) Books (58) USA Road Trip (51) Picaresque Novels (20) First Novels (338) Five star books (1,501) Unread books (620) I Can't Finish This Book (168) Loading...
Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book.
an interesting and fun read. I felt the ending too abrupt-but probably only because I wanted more.The characters, with slight exaggerations, were people I knew from my childhood ( ) This strikes me as the sort of book one will only like if one has known the characters in person at some point. Ignatius exists. His mama exists. Mancuso, the Levys, Jones, Santa, Trixie... I've known all of them in some capacity or another. And if you haven't known them, for all their faults, your life is missing something. 1.75 stars. i do understand the appeal of this, i do. and it's not bad, but it is overdone, overlong, over the top. too farcical as a whole for me, while i appreciate the thematic stuff he's addressing. it would have hit harder, for me, had it been half the length. to me, this became repetitive and too clownish to be taken seriously, whereas it would have been funnier and at the same time more hard hitting if it hadn't dragged on the way it did. It is with great regret that I report that a book I loved, loved, loved in my 20's did not hold up nearly as well upon a second reading in my 60's. The book is brilliant for what it is, but I guess I just don't like what it is anymore. What I do and did like very very much is the feel and the sights and the sounds and the smells of New Orleans. As someone who spent a decent amount of time in the Big Easy while living in adjacent Mississippi decades ago, I can truly appreciate Toole's descriptive prowess in this regard. He really isn't exaggerating things very much at all. New Orleans is another planet. I think where the novel falls down for me now is the central character of Ignatius J Reilly. I find him less humorous now, more of a symbol of white men who think they know better than anybody else, but are just stupid, out-of-touch, corpulent losers. I cannot identify with this character at all, but he is brilliantly drawn. I cannot deny that. I read this a long time ago but it has stayed in my memory, a testament to the author's skill. I have read several comments and wonder why people do read books. Are we supposed to identify with Ignatius? Do we have to imagine ourselves as the heroes of the books we read, to fulfil some adventures we may have not lived? Surely, reading must, at some point, take us out of our own sphere, to understand others. We may not like him and we not like the fact that luck or genius lifted him out of impending predicament. Perhaps many have taken exception to Toole's portrayal of those who disliked or would have had Ignatius committed as the Confederacy of Dunces.
1981 John Kennedy Toole La conjuration des imbéciles traduit de l'américain par J.-P. Carasso, Laffont «Drôle de livre, énorme dans la bouffonnerie et la satire, énorme comme son personnage principal, une sorte d'Ubu dévastateur qui lance des anathèmes sur un monde en décomposition.» (Lire, décembre 1981) This is the kind of book one wants to keep quoting from. I could, with keen pleasure, copy all of Jones's dialogue out and then get down to the other characters. Apart from being a fine funny novel (but also comic in the wider sense, like Gargantua or Ulysses), this is a classic compendium of Louisiana speech. What evidently fascinated Toole (a genuine scholar, MA Columbia and so on) about his own town was something that A.J. Liebling noted in his The Earl of Louisiana: the existence of a New Orleans city accent close to the old Al Smith tonality, 'extinct in Manhattan', living alongside a plantation dialect which cried out for accurate recording. El protagonista de esta novela es uno de los personajes más memorables de la literatura norteamericana: Ignatus Reilly -una mezcla de Oliver Hardy delirante, Don Quijote adiposo y santo Tomás de Aquino, perverso, reunidos en una persona-, que a los treinta años aún vive con su estrafalaria madre, ocupado en escribir una extensa y demoledora denuncia contra nuestro siglo, tan carente de teología y geometría como de decencia y buen gusto, un alegado desquiciado contra una sociedad desquiciada. Por una inesperada necesidad de dinero, se ve 'catapultado en la fiebre de la existencia contemporánea', embarcándose en empleos y empresas de lo más disparatado. Ruggero Bianchi Tuttolibri settembre 1998 Il caso di Una banda di idioti di John Kennedy Toole ricorda sorprendentemente, per molti versi, quello di Il giovane Holden di J.D. Salinger. Opere, entrambe, di autori (quasi) esordienti e comunque alla loro prima esperienza nel campo della narrativa lunga. E scritte, entrambe, da artisti irrequieti e verosimilmente nevrotici, non disposti a campare sulla sinecura del loro primo successo. Conosciamo tutti, di Salinger, la scelta di centellinare i propri scritti e di difendere la sua scelta esistenziale, una sorte di coleridgiana morte-in-vita. Ma pochi sanno della fine di Toole, nato nel 1937 e suicidatosi nel 1969, a soli trentadue anni, lasciando alla madre il compito di trasformare in bestseller e in classico moderno un libro che forse non pensava di poter mai pubblicare e che, negli Stati Uniti, uscì grazie soltanto al parere autorevole (sebbene segretamente perplesso) del celebre critico Walter Percy, che firma anche l’introduzione all’edizione italiana.Ma le analogie non si fermano qui. Sia Il govane Holden che Una banda di idioti pongono, fin dal titolo, grossi problemi alla bravura dei traduttori. Il primo alludendo, con la dizione originale di The Catcher in the Rye, alle figure del baseball e alle coltivazioni del mais; il secondo chiamando in causa, sotto la formula di A Confederacy of Duncies, la realtà di un Sud "confederato" nella guerra civile e l’indimenticato poema di Alexander Pope, The Dunciad (1728), un capolavoro satirico inglese del primo Settecento che nessuno oggi legge come nessuno oggi legge il Parini e, probabilmente, per le stesse ragioni. Come se non bastasse, ai due romanzi è toccata di fatto la medesima sorte in Italia. The Catcher in the Rye di Salinger, uscito nel 1952 nel nostro Paese con il titolo Vita da uomo (Casini editore, traduzione di Jacopo Darca), divenne un bestseller grazie alla nuova edizione di Einaudi del 1961 (trad. di A. Motti). A Confederacy of Duncies passò inosservato dal pubblico una quindicina d’anni fa, sebbene Luciana Bianciardi vincesse, per la sua traduzione oggi ripubblicata in altra cornice, il Premio Monselice 1983. Belongs to Publisher Series10/18, Domaine étranger (2010) Biblioteca Sábado (22) Compactos Anagrama (38) Llibres Anagrama (10) — 6 more Was inspired byAwardsNotable Lists
Ignatius J. Reilly of New Orleans, --selfish, domineering, deluded, tragic and larger than life-- is a noble crusader against a world of dunces. He is a modern-day Quixote beset by giants of the modern age. In magnificent revolt against the twentieth century, Ignatius propels his monstrous bulk among the flesh posts of the fallen city, documenting life on his Big Chief tablets as he goes, until his maroon-haired mother decrees that Ignatius must work. No library descriptions found. |
Current DiscussionsNonePopular covers
Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
Is this you?Become a LibraryThing Author. Penguin Australia4 editions of this book were published by Penguin Australia. Editions: 0141182865, 0141023465, 0141045647, 0241951593 |