A Confederacy of Dunces

A Confederacy of Dunces
Author(s)	John Kennedy Toole
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre(s)	Comedy, Tragicomedy
Publisher	Louisiana State University Press
Publication date	1980
Media type	Print (hardback and paperback), Audio book
ISBN	0-8071-0657-7
OCLC Number	5336849
Dewey Decimal	813/.5/4
LC Classification	PS3570.O54 C66 1980

A Confederacy of Dunces is a picaresque novel written by John Kennedy Toole, published by LSU Press in 1980, 11 years after the author's suicide. The book was published through the efforts of writer Walker Percy (who also contributed a revealing foreword) and Toole's mother Thelma Toole, quickly becoming a cult classic, and later a mainstream success. Toole posthumously won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1981. It is now considered a canonical work of modern Southern literature.^[1]

The title derives from the epigraph by Jonathan Swift: "When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him." (Thoughts on Various Subjects, Moral and Diverting)

The story is set in New Orleans in the early 1960s. The central character is Ignatius J. Reilly, an educated but slothful 30-year-old man still living with his mother in the city's Uptown neighborhood, who, due to an incident early in the book, must set out to get a job. In his quest for employment he has various adventures with colorful French Quarter characters.

Major characters

Ignatius J. Reilly

Ignatius Jacques Reilly is something of a modern Don Quixote—eccentric, idealistic, and creative, sometimes to the point of delusion. In his foreword to the book, Walker Percy describes Ignatius as a "slob extraordinary, a mad Oliver Hardy, a fat Don Quixote, a perverse Thomas Aquinas rolled into one." He disdains modernity, particularly pop culture. The disdain becomes his obsession: he goes to movies in order to mock their perversity and express his outrage with the contemporary world's lack of "theology and geometry." He prefers the scholastic philosophy of the Middle Ages, and the Early Medieval philosopher Boethius in particular.^[2] However he also enjoys many modern comforts and conveniences, and is given to claiming that the rednecks of rural Louisiana hate all modern technology which they associate with progress. The workings of his pyloric valve play an important role in his life, reacting strongly to incidents in a fashion that he likens to Cassandra in terms of prophetic significance.^[3]

Ignatius is of the mindset that he does not belong in the world and that his numerous failings are the work of some higher power. He continually refers to the goddess Fortuna as having spun him downwards on her wheel of luck. Ignatius loves to eat, and his masturbatory fantasies lead in strange directions. His mockery of obscene images is portrayed as a defensive posture to hide their titillating effect on him. Although considering himself to have an expansive and learned worldview, Ignatius has an aversion to ever leaving the town of his birth, and frequently bores friends and strangers with the story of his sole, abortive journey from New Orleans, a trip to Baton Rouge on a Greyhound Scenicruiser bus, which Ignatius recounts as a traumatic ordeal of extreme horror.

Myrna Minkoff

Myrna Minkoff, referred to by Ignatius as "that minx", is a Jewish beatnik from New York City, whom Ignatius met while she was in college in New Orleans. Though their political, social, religious, and personal orientations could hardly be more different, Myrna and Ignatius fascinate one another. The novel repeatedly refers to Myrna and Ignatius having engaged in tag-team attacks on the teachings of their college professors. For most of the novel she is seen only in the regular correspondence which the two sustain since her return to New York, a correspondence heavily weighted with sexual analysis on the part of Myrna and contempt for her apparent sacrilegious activity by Ignatius. Officially, they both deplore everything the other stands for. Though neither of them will admit it, their correspondence indicates that, though separated by half a continent, many of their actions are taken with the intention of impressing one another.

Irene Reilly

Mrs. Reilly has been widowed for 21 years. At first, she allows Ignatius his space and takes him where he needs to go, but throughout the course of the novel she learns to stand up for herself. She also has a drinking problem, most frequently indulging in muscatel, although Ignatius exaggerates that she is a raving, abusive drunk.

She falls for Claude Robichaux, a fairly well-off man with a railroad pension and rental properties. At the end of the novel she decides she will marry Claude. But first she agrees with Santa Battaglia (who has not only recently become Mrs. Reilly's new best friend, but also harbors an intense dislike for Ignatius) that Ignatius is insane and arranges to have him sent to a mental hospital.

Other characters

• Santa Battaglia is an elderly woman who becomes a friend of Mrs. Reilly's. The two meet through Santa's nephew, Patrolman Mancuso, and quickly become friends. She shows a marked disdain for Ignatius, suggesting that Mrs. Reilly force Ignatius to get a job and not put up with his antics. She attempts to set up Mrs. Reilly with Mr. Robichaux as a potential husband.
• Claude Robichaux is the said potential new husband—an old man constantly on the lookout for any "communiss" (sic for Communists) who might infiltrate America, and who takes an interest in protecting Irene.
• Angelo Mancuso is an inept police officer, the nephew of Santa Battaglia. After Mancuso makes several improper arrests, the sergeant in charge is angry with him, and he must somehow make a major bust to avoid being kicked off the force; he is reduced to wearing ridiculous disguises and spending time in the bus station toilets in order to arrest "suspicious characters".
• Lana Lee runs a downscale French Quarter strip club, the "Night Of Joy." She employs Darlene and Jones and runs an illegal pornographic photo ring on the side.
• George is Lana's high-school-aged partner in the pornography ring.
• Darlene is the "Night Of Joy's" goodhearted but none-too-bright stripper who has a pet cockatoo. It is Darlene's intention to better herself, moving up from getting the clients to buy watered-down drinks, to dancing and having an "exotic" routine involving her pet.
• Burma Jones is the porter/janitor for the "Night Of Joy" who resentfully holds on to his job only because the police will arrest him for vagrancy if he does not (an indignity not uncommon for African Americans in the U.S. South in the Jim Crow era). Most of the white characters tend to pay only peripheral attention to him, though his actions are central to the plot.
• Mr. Clyde is the owner of Paradise Vendors, an old man frustrated with his hot dog vendor business and his vendors' growing disrepute, a situation not at all helped by Ignatius' absurd clothing.
• Gus Levy is the Jewish owner of Levy Pants, a family business in Bywater whose best days seem gone. He prefers to visit Levy Pants as little as possible, as it reminds him of his father, from whom he inherited the business.
• Mrs. Levy is Gus Levy's wife. Having taken (and failed) a correspondence course in psychology, she attempts to apply psychoanalytic principles to her husband and Miss Trixie. She also specializes in making her husband's life miserable, often blackmailing him by threatening to show their two daughters the horrors to which Gus has supposedly exposed her.
• Miss Trixie is an aged clerk at the Levy Pants office who suffers from senile dementia. Mrs. Levy thinks she's doing a good deed by keeping Miss Trixie employed, although Miss Trixie would rather retire. Moreover, Miss Trixie is a liability to the company and repeatedly demands a holiday turkey and ham, both of which were promised to her and not given.
• Mr. Gonzalez is the office manager at Levy Pants, meek and skittish in demeanor, but fervently loyal to the company and a strong believer in its philosophy, if it indeed has one.
• Dorian Greene is a flamboyant French Quarter homosexual who puts on elaborate parties for the subculture. Ignatius tries to recruit him and his "sodomite friends" to infiltrate the army and thus "take down worldwide government" in his unsatisfying failure at eclipsing Myrna Minkoff's political endeavors.
• Frieda Club, Betty Bumper, and Liz Steele are a trio of aggressive lesbians who run afoul of Ignatius, and who figure belligerently in the climactic French Quarter brawl.
• Dr. Talc is a mediocre college professor at Tulane University who had the misfortune of teaching Myrna and Ignatius in separate classes one semester. He still feels the effects years later.
• Miss Annie is the disgruntled neighbor of Irene and Ignatius Reilly who professes a severe addiction to headache medication due to the Reillys' constantly noisy domestic quarrels.

Ignatius at the movies

Toole provides comical descriptions of two of the films Ignatius watches without naming them; they can be recognized as Billy Rose's Jumbo and That Touch of Mink, both Doris Day features released in 1962.^[4] In another passage, Ignatius declines to see another film, a "widely praised Swedish drama about a man who was losing his soul". This is most likely Ingmar Bergman's Winter Light, also released in 1962.^{[citation needed]} In another passage, Irene Reilly recalls the night Ignatius was conceived: after she and her husband viewed Red Dust, released in October 1932.^[5] This would place Ignatius' birth around July 1933, and since he is 30 in the novel, would place the story in 1963.

Confederacy and New Orleans

Canal Street, New Orleans in the late 1950s; the D. H. Holmes store at right

A "Lucky Dogs" cart from the era of the novel

The book is famous for its rich depiction of New Orleans and the city's dialects, including Yat.^[6][7] Many locals and writers think that it is the best and most accurate depiction of the city in a work of fiction.^[8]

The city described in the novel differs in some ways from the actual New Orleans. The first chapter mentions the sun setting over the Mississippi River at the foot of Canal Street. As this direction is to the south-east, this is clearly impossible in reality. Possibly this is a joke by Toole related to the fact that the area across the river is known as the "West Bank", despite the fact that because of the twists of the river it is actually to the south or east from parts of central New Orleans. Such details are not likely to be noticed by people who are not familiar with New Orleans.

A bronze statue of Ignatius J. Reilly can be found under the clock on the down-river side of the 800 block of Canal Street, New Orleans, the former site of the D.H. Holmes Department Store, now the Chateau Bourbon Hotel. The statue mimics the opening scene: Ignatius waits for his mother under the D.H. Holmes clock, clutching a Werlein's shopping bag, dressed in a hunting cap, flannel shirt, baggy pants and scarf, 'studying the crowd of people for signs of bad taste.' The statue is modeled on New Orleans actor John "Spud" McConnell, who portrayed Ignatius in a stage version of the novel.

Various local businesses are mentioned in addition to D. H. Holmes, including Werlein's Music Store and local cinemas such as the Prytania Theater. Some readers from elsewhere assume Ignatius's favorite soft drink, Dr. Nut, to be fictitious, but it was an actual local soft drink brand of the era. The "Paradise Hot Dogs" vending carts are an easily recognized satire of those actually branded "Lucky Dogs".

Structure

The structure of Confederacy of Dunces reflects the structure of Ignatius's favorite book, Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy. Like Boethius' book, the Confederacy of Dunces is divided into chapters that are further divided into a varying number of subchapters. Key parts of some chapters are outside of the main narrative. In Consolation, sections of narrative prose alternate with metrical verse. In Confederacy, such narrative interludes vary more widely in form and include light verse, journal entries by Ignatius, and also letters between himself and Myrna. A copy of the Consolation of Philosophy within the narrative itself also becomes an explicit plot device in several ways.

Certain aspects of this novel mirror author Toole's real-life experiences. For instance, Ignatius' two main jobs through the course of the novel are pants factory worker and hot dog vendor. For a brief time after graduating from Tulane, author Toole worked at a pants factory. During free time, he spent days in New Orleans' French Quarter, where he helped a friend sell food from a stand. Post-college, Toole also lived with his mother, who was thought to be overprotective. However, in other aspects, the author was quite unlike his most famous character; Toole enjoyed travel, and was known for being neat and well dressed.^{[citation needed]}

The difficult path to publication

As outlined in the introduction to a later revised edition, the book would never have been published if Toole's mother had not found a smeared carbon copy of the manuscript left in the house following Toole's 1969 suicide at age 31. Thelma Toole was persistent and tried several different publishers to no avail.

Thelma repeatedly called Walker Percy, an author and college instructor at Loyola University New Orleans, demanding he read it. He initially resisted; however, as he recounts in the book's foreword:

"...the lady was persistent, and it somehow came to pass that she stood in my office handing me the hefty manuscript. There was no getting out of it; only one hope remained—that I could read a few pages and that they would be bad enough for me, in good conscience, to read no farther. Usually I can do just that. Indeed the first paragraph often suffices. My only fear was that this one might not be bad enough, or might be just good enough, so that I would have to keep reading.

In this case I read on. And on. First with the sinking feeling that it was not bad enough to quit, then with a prickle of interest, then a growing excitement, and finally an incredulity: surely it was not possible that it was so good."

The book was published by LSU Press in 1980. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1981.

The original manuscript is currently at Tulane University in New Orleans.

Film adaptations

There have been repeated attempts to turn the book into a film. In 1982, Harold Ramis was to write and direct an adaptation, starring John Belushi and Richard Pryor, but Belushi's death prevented this. Later, John Candy and Chris Farley were touted for the lead, both of whom died at an early age, leading many to ascribe a curse to the role.^[9]

Director John Waters was interested in directing an adaption starring Divine as Ignatius when Divine was alive.^[10]

British performer and writer Stephen Fry was at one point commissioned to adapt Toole's book for the screen.^[11] He was sent to New Orleans by Paramount Studios in 1997 to get background for a screenplay adaptation.^[12]

John Goodman, a longtime resident of New Orleans, was slated to play Ignatius at one point.

A version adapted by Steven Soderbergh and Scott Kramer, and slated to be directed by David Gordon Green, was scheduled for release in 2005. The film was to star Will Ferrell as Ignatius and Lily Tomlin as Ignatius's mother. A staged reading of the script took place at the 8th Nantucket Film Festival, with Ferrell as Ignatius, Anne Meara as his mother, Paul Rudd as Officer Mancuso, Kristen Johnston as Lana Lee, Mos Def as Burma Jones, Rosie Perez as Darlene, Olympia Dukakis as Santa Battaglia and Miss Trixie, Natasha Lyonne as Myrna, Alan Cumming as Dorian Green, John Shea as Gonzales, Jesse Eisenberg as George, John Conlon as Claude Robichaux, Jace Alexander as Bartender Ben, Celia Weston as Miss Annie, Miss Inez & Mrs. Levy, and Dan Hedaya as Mr. Levy.^[13]

Various reasons are cited as to why the movie has yet to be filmed. They include: disorganization and lack of interest at Paramount Pictures, the head of the Louisiana State Film Commission being murdered, and the devastating effects of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans.^[9] When asked why the film was never made, Will Ferrell has said it is a "mystery".^[14] A 2007 Cracked.com article titled "The 10 Most Awesome Movies Hollywood Ever Killed"^[15] had the version starring Ferrell at #1, and paraphrased him saying that " it's the movie everyone in Hollywood wants to make, but no one wants to finance".

See also

Novels portal

• List of works published posthumously

Notes

1. ^ "Ignatius Rising: The Life of John Kennedy Toole (review)". Southern Cultures 10 (1). 2004. ISSN 1068-8218. http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=/journals/southern_cultures/v010/10.1giemza.html. 
2. ^ Miller, Karl. An American tragedy. A lifetime of rejection broke John Kennedy Toole. But his aged mother believed in his talent, found a publisher for his novel and rescued his memory from oblivion, New Statesman, March 5, 1999, accessed August 25, 2010.
3. ^ John Lowe (December 2008). Louisiana culture from the colonial era to Katrina. LSU Press. p. 164. ISBN 9780807133378. http://books.google.com/books?id=scx65UQZoL4C&pg=PA164. Retrieved 15 March 2011. 
4. ^ Patteson, Richard F. Ignatius Goes to the Movies: The Films in Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces., NMAL: Notes on Modern American Literature, 6.2 (1982): Item 14.
5. ^ Toole, pg 136.
6. ^ Stephen J. Nagle, Sara L. Sanders (2003). English in the southern United States. Cambridge University Press. p. 181. http://books.google.com/books?id=MIR9mPrOdPsC&pg=PA181&dq=yat+confederacy+dunces&cd=2#v=onepage&q=yat%20confederacy%20dunces&f=false. 
7. ^ "Ignatius Comes of Age". Tulane University (Tulanian magazine). http://www2.tulane.edu/article_news_details.cfm?ArticleID=3324. Retrieved 2010-02-05. 
8. ^ Liz Miller. "An Interview with Poppy Z. Brite". Bookslut. http://www.bookslut.com/features/2004_09_003129.php. Retrieved 2011-08-01. 
9. ^ ^{a b} Hyman, Peter (December 14, 2006). "The development hell of A Confederacy of Dunces.". Slate. http://www.slate.com/id/2155500. Retrieved 2009-01-29. 
10. ^ Allman, Kevin. "John Waters: The Gambit interview | News | Gambit New Orleans News and Entertainment". Bestofneworleans.com. http://bestofneworleans.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A75717. Retrieved 2011-08-01. 
11. ^ "Huffingtonpost.com article". Huffingtonpost.com article. 2005-09-06. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stephen-fry/the-great-stink-of-2005_b_6892.html. Retrieved 2011-08-01. 
12. ^ Fry, S.: 'Stephen Fry in America' (Harper Collins, 2008), 138
13. ^ var authorId = "" by Steve Head (2003-06-25). "Filmforce article". Filmforce.ign.com. http://filmforce.ign.com/articles/425/425858p1.html. Retrieved 2011-08-01. 
14. ^ Stephenson, Hunter (February 29, 2008). "Will Ferrell Talks Land of the Lost, Old School 2, Elf 2 and A Confederacy of Dunces". Slashfilm. http://www.slashfilm.com/2008/02/29/will-ferrell-talks-land-of-the-lost-old-school-2-elf-2-and-a-confederacy-of-dunces/. Retrieved 2009-01-29. 
15. ^ Wong, David. "The 10 Most Awesome Movies Hollywood Ever Killed". Cracked.com. http://www.cracked.com/article_15072_the-10-most-awesome-movies-hollywood-ever-killed_p2.html. Retrieved 2011-08-01. 

Sources

• Toole, John Kennedy. A Confederacy of Dunces, LSU Press. 1980 ISBN 0-8021-3020-8

Scholarly studies

• Clark, William Bedford. "All Toole's children: A reading of A Confederacy of Dunces." Essays in Literature 14 (1987): 269-80.
• Dunne, Sara L. "Moviegoing in the Modern Novel: Holden, Binx, Ignatius." Studies in Popular Culture 28.1 (2005): 37-47.
• Kline, Michael. "Narrating the Grotesque: The Rhetoric of Humor in John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces." Southern Quarterly 37.3-4 (1999): 283-91.
• Leighton, H. Vernon. Evidence of influences on John Kennedy Toole's "A Confederacy of Dunces," including Geoffrey Chaucer. Version 2.0 (July 1, 2011).
• Lowe, John. "The Carnival Voices of A Confederacy of Dunces." Louisiana Culture from the Colonial Era to Katrina. Ed. John Lowe. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State UP, 2008. 159-90.
• McNeil, David. "A Confederacy of Dunces as Reverse Satire: The American Subgenre." Mississippi Quarterly 38 (1984): 33-47.
• Palumbo, Carmine D. "John Kennedy Toole and His Confederacy of Dunces." Louisiana Folklore Miscellany 10 (1995): 59-77.
• Patteson, Richard F. and Thomas Sauret. "The Consolation of Illusion: John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces." Texas Review 4.1-2 (1983): 77-87.
• Pugh, Tison. "'It's Prolly Fulla Dirty Stories': Masturbatory Allegory and Queer Medievalism in John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces." Studies in Medievalism 15 (2006): 77-100.
• Rudnicki, Robert. "Euphues and the Anatomy of Influence: John Lyly, Harold Bloom, James Olney, and the Construction of John Kennedy Toole's Ignatius." Mississippi Quarterly 62.1-2 (2009): 281-302.
• Simmons, Jonathan. "Ignatius Reilly and the Concept of the Grotesque in John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces." Mississippi Quarterly 43.1 (1989): 33-43.
• Simon, Richard K. "John Kennedy Toole and Walker Percy: Fiction and Repetition in A Confederacy of Dunces." Texas Studies in Literature & Language 36.1 (1994): 99-116.
• Zaenker, Karl A. "Hrotsvit and the Moderns: Her Impact on John Kennedy Toole and Peter Hacks." Hrotsvit of Gandersheim: Rara Avis in Saxonia? Ed. Katharina M. Wilson. Ann Arbor, MI: Marc, 1987. 275-85.

External links

• A review of the book written when the latest film adaptation was still scheduled to go ahead
• Slate article on the problems plaguing the film adaptation
• Photos of first edition Confederacy of Dunces
• A tour of Confederacy locations