A Confederacy of Dunces

The most interesting thing about A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole is probably how the book found its way into print. Toole wrote his thick manuscript in the early 1960s, basing it in large part on his personal experiences, but could not interest a publisher. Eventually he underwent what appears to have been an emotional collapse, and in early 1969 he killed himself. In most cases, the story would have ended there; but Toole’s tenacious mother became determined to see her son’s work published. She gave a copy to renowned Southern novelist Walker Percy and imposed upon him to read it. Percy fell in love with the book and convinced a local university press to issue a small edition in 1980. A year later Toole was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Subsequently the novel was translated into eighteen languages and has sold more than a million and a half copies.

This is one of those books I’ve put off reading for years. Many people have recommended it to me, usually with the comment that they know people exactly like the characters in the book. Confederacy is also reputed to include a skewed, but dead-on depiction of New Orleans in the early ’60s.

Had not so many trusted sources spoken highly of the work, I probably wouldn’t have persevered to finish it. After a fairly strong if somewhat farcical opening chapter or two, the story becomes quite dull and repetitious for nearly three quarters of its length, only perking up again in the last quarter.

Ignatius J. Reilly, the primary character (the book has no heroes, only protagonists) is an elephantine, over-educated, egotistical, sociopathic, slovenly, unemployed thirty year old living at home with his mother. He is a fool and so is everyone with whom he interacts. The book is an overlong depiction of those interactions.

For a good part of the novel, I had the feeling that I was reading cobbled-together absurdities and caricatures. I found myself struggling to figure out just what kind of insanity Ignatius suffered from. He fit no standard diagnosis—not schizophrenia, not bipolar disorder, not clinical depression. As a result, Ignatius seemed unconvincing and I began to doubt Toole’s skill at creating believable literary characters.

I’m chastened to admit that it took me until the very last chapter, as Ignatius stands cowering and blubbering before his outraged mother, to finally diagnose him: He suffers from some form of infantilism and has the emotional development of a child. He is a spoiled brat, completely self-absorbed, with no consideration or empathy for others. (All small children are sociopaths.) He thinks like a child, concerned only about his own wants and needs, his “revenge” against those who have slighted him, and his fatuous writings and “crusades.” He is self-indulgent, cramming himself with hot dogs, confections, and his favorite soft drink, almond-flavored Dr. Nut. He scorns real women for a rubber glove. Ten years in college have not provided him adequate time to grow up. He is incapable of acting like an adult and certainly can't hold down a job in the real world.

Now that I better understand what Toole was attempting to portray, I have more respect for him as a writer. Toole’s prose is good, but there is too much of it. Through most of the novel, secondary characters say the very same things over and over again, like catch phrases, so that by midway it all becomes quite tedious. I generally dislike reading dialect, but have to admit that Toole generally succeeds in capturing the speech of some segments of New Orleans. His lack of political correctness (a concept for which no term had been coined when he wrote this) gives a refreshing freedom to the dialog.

There is a major flaw in the work (if one lets reality intrude into the often cartoonish presentation): At the end the plot hinges on a defamatory letter that leads to a threatened half-million-dollar libel lawsuit. I’m pretty sure that private, uncirculated communications are not subject to libel laws and that to libel someone, you have to publish a false accusation—that is, distribute it to multiple people, not just to the party it concerns.

It’s instructive to look at Amazon’s reader reviews. Of 976 reviewers (of an earlier edition) 653 give the book five stars and 96 give it only one. This reflects a surprising disparity of opinion, with an approximate sixty-six percent considering the book excellent and about ten percent thinking it poor.

So why should anyone read this book? A lot of readers have liked it, and you may find something in it that eluded me. It presents an interesting picture of a bygone era and some of it is quite funny. It cautions against the vagaries of literary awards and gives bittersweet hope to rejected writers everywhere. One can’t help but wonder how many dusty manuscripts lie abandoned and half-forgotten in desk drawers or on closet shelves around the world, and how many of them deserve a wider audience.
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Links of possible interest:

Reader Reviews at Amazon

John Kennedy Toole entry at Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Kennedy_Toole

Walker Percy entry at Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walker_Percy

Dr. Nut (local New Orleans soft drink):
http://www.angelfire.com/tn/traderz/DrNut.html