girl in greenwood

A Confederacy of Dunces
by John Kennedy Toole

Okay, so this book won a Pulitzer Prize and has been mentioned to me over and over as a classic of comedic literature, not to mention as THE book about New Orleans. Perhaps my expectations were too high, or perhaps my sense of humor is broken, because I did not like it very much.

Ignatius J. Reilly is the protagonist, an overeducated, overweight, overwhelming figure. He is 30 years old and lives with his mother in a tiny house in New Orleans, where he spends his time writing dense works of comparative history on Big Chief tablets and bellowing at his neurotic mother. After she has a driving accident, she forces Ignatius to look for a job to help pay the bills. Ignatius is clearly not cut out for the working world, and bumbles from job to job, growing fatter and more troublesome as time passes.

I was actually more interested in the secondary characters than our anti-hero Ignatius - each one seemed like an offbeat character study. Lana Lee, the proprietress of the Night of Joy bar & cabaret, who poses for pornographic photos as a schoolteacher.... Myra Minkhoff, Ignatius' college girlfriend who believes society's problems could be solved if everyone had more sex... Patrolman Mancuso, who tried to arrest Ignatius and is punished by the police captain by being forced to wear bizarre costumes and go undercover to find and arrest "a character"... Mancuso's crazy aunt Santa, who talks to her dead mother and drags Ignatius' mother Irene to the bowling alley at every opportunity... You get the idea.

I think the reason that I did not connect with this novel the way that some people do is because people like Ignatius make me cringe. I feel a mixture of pity and revulsion for people who are both intellectually brilliant and socially inept to the point of being offensive, and so I can't bring myself to laugh at him. I've certainly known some Ignatiuses in my life, and I just hope that they are not being similarly ridiculed. Yeah, I'm a softie, what can I say?

One other thing you should know about this book is that it was published posthumously. Toole's mother found the manuscript in her son's belongings after he committed suicide, and brought it to the attention of a publisher, who reluctantly agreed to read it (who wants to tell a grieving mother that her son's life's work is crappy?) and then was amazed to find that he loved it. I do have to admit that the writing is brilliant - Toole captured so many different character's voices with perfect pitch. His word choices were just offbeat enough to show his mastery of the language, without making the writing seem stuffy or artificial. It's a pity that Toole died so young.

Labels: book reports