A Confederacy of Dunces (1980)

“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.”

A very funny but, as its detractors like to point out, slightly flabby book, A Confederacy of Dunces is dominated by the huge blancmange-like presence of its protagonist, Ignatius J Reilly. Gluttonous, onanistic, loquacious and determinedly hard done-by, he's a Falstaffian creation, a kind of demonic Oliver Hardy rolling and farting and fulminating through a brilliantly evoked 1960s New Orleans.

There is no looking past Ignatius – if you can't stand him, then you're not going to get far with this book. Still, I'm kind of surprised that so many of the negative reviews here are just complaints that Ignatius is unpleasant, or that the underlying sadness of his situation stops it from being funny. Maybe it's just different backgrounds, but for me he fits perfectly into the tradition of English comedy where I'm most comfortable, and where focusing on articulate but amoral monsters has been de rigueur from Saki to Blackadder. And yes, his situation is pretty pathetic, but you can't have good comedy without underlying pain. Besides, he wouldn't have it any other way. ‘Optimism nauseates me. It is perverse,’ as Ignatius declaims himself. ‘Since man's fall, his proper position in the universe has been one of misery.’

A failure in every aspect of his life, Ignatius, in his thirties, still lives at home with his mother in a dilapidated house in (what was then) the lower-class district of Constantinople Street. The novel's plotlessness follows the plotlessness of his own life, as he fails in a sequence of menial jobs (including most famously as a street hot-dog vendor), sabotages his mother's social life, tries to lead a black workers' uprising, and concocts an innovative plan to bring about world peace.

There is something almost heroic about Ignatius's refusal to accept his dismal position in life – he reacts to every indignity not with acceptance, but with voluble fury. Every time he opens his mouth to issue another misplaced denunciation against someone who's only trying to help him, I mentally rub my hands together with glee. It's just too much fun. And he's surrounded by this wonderful cast of supporting characters, all of them nonsensical stereotypes but portrayed with such disinterested, across-the-board mockery that it's impossible to find them offensive. I particularly loved Myrna Minkoff, a New York beatnik and caricature of the lefty liberated New Woman, with whom Ignatius is conducting a feverish love-hate correspondence.

When she writes him her plans to deliver a lecture at the Bronx YWCA on the theme of ‘Erotic Liberty as a Weapon Against Reactionaries’, Ignatius scribbles back in extravagant derision:

On the dark night of that dubious lecture, the sole member of your audience will probably be some desperately lonely old male librarian who saw a light in the window of the lecture hall and hopefully came in to escape the cold and the horrors of his personal hell. There in the hall, his stooped figure sitting alone before the podium, your nasal voice echoing among the empty chairs and hammering boredom, confusion and sexual reference deeper and deeper into the poor wretch's bald skull, confounded to the point of hysteria, he will doubtlessly exhibit himself, waving his crabbed organ like a club in despair against the grim sound that drones on and on over his head.

Your mileage may vary, but I could read pages and pages of this stuff. Which is just as well, because the book is not as tight as it could be, owing in part to the author's having committed suicide before getting it published instead of after. Unlike with some authors, I don't think that Toole's suicide actually has much relevance to the themes of A Confederacy of Dunces; I don't see this book as a howl of despair at an uncaring world, and I don't think Toole intended us to sympathise with Ignatius's worldview any more than we need to to find him by turns funny or tragic. It's much more knockabout and picaresque than that, as I think the ending makes clear.

It's also, among other things, a wonderful New Orleans book, in which the city's language and psychogeography play a major role. Toole's notation of the local dialect is both cartoonish and somehow completely convincing, and in a memorable aside, Ignatius describes the city as being ‘famous for its gamblers, prostitutes, exhibitionists, Antichrists, alcoholics, sodomites, drug addicts, fetishists, onanists, pornographers, frauds, jades, litterbugs, and lesbians’ – which does rather unfairly raise my hopes as someone planning a trip there next week. ( )

It was crucial to read this when I didn't know better. There is a suspicion that I wouldn't have liked it as much had I encountered it later. that said, I do find it odd that many who trash this as overripe tomfoolery appear to appreciate Pynchon for just such zany liberties. Neither here nor there. I have bought this book for many people. I seldom ask them what they thought. ( )

I will, in all frankness, admit that I couldn't get past the first few scenes of the book. I found the lead character's personality so grating that I didn't want to hear any more about him. It made me yearn for the New Orleans Police Department to use unreasonable force on him. Maybe I'll give it a second chance down the road. Maybe I won't. ( )

I found this book both very funny and sad, when I read it quite a few years ago. Being a resident of New Orleans probably helped. The characters and dialog were completely believable, because I encountered people much like them in the course of everyday life. Of course it's not quite great literature. No way to tell if Toole was a flash in the pan, or would have gone on to write even better novels. ( )

**True confessions - I listened to this book as an audiobook



Our main character's name is Ignatius Reilly who is a 30 year old who lives at home with his mother in New Orleans. He doesn't work, but after a run in with the law, his mother forces him to leave the house and look for a job. Ignatius is self centered and delusional, and gives his mother a million excuses on why he cannot get a job, or even why he can't go for an interview for a job. He is nothing better than a lazy-man child that a reader will love to hate.



This book was....weird. I didn't find it particularly funny - even though it is advertised as such. The characters were odd, and there is no way to like Ignatius even a little bit (although, I am thinking we as readers never really are supposed to). But I just kind of listened, and rolled along with the story, but never became fully invested in the book.



I finished the book, but I don't recommend it. It seemed like a repetitive Vaudeville act - not going anywhere. In my opinion - not worth the time.

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