Poor Toole had everything going for him most of the time - wit, education, charisma, talent - but in the end his private demons and public disappointments got the better of him.Ĭonfederacy has gradually gained the status of a beloved cult classic, the kind of book insistently pressed on you by enthusiastic fans. If it weren’t for Toole’s indomitable mother spending years knocking on every possible door to finally get her son’s lost masterpiece published, and respected local author Walker Percy finally reading the smeared manuscript, the Pulitzer-winning book would never have seen the light of day. The biggest is probably because Confederacy, his only full-length novel, came very close to never being published at all. Toole’s life story is compelling for a number of reasons. But even with my limited experience, reading Confederacy gives off a sense of the whole New Orleans vibe: all that glorious appetite for food and drink, the funky music, unique architecture, the delight in self-expression, the festivals, the sultry heat, those magnificent oak trees, and the shabby genteel style of self-presentation that would be far less enticing in a place that wasn’t as deeply committed to consuming all the pleasures the good life has to offer. I’m a new resident of the Crescent City, and coronavirus concerns have irritatingly kept me from being able to explore the city as much as I’d like to. The fact that there is a life-size statue of Reilly slouching today in that exact spot, glaring in perpetual suspicion at the bad taste of all the tourists and Quarter characters who are always milling around Canal Street, tells us how well author John Kennedy Toole knew his turf. The first page is one of the great opening paragraphs because it quickly and subtly establishes so much about the story to follow: we see the oddly named Ignatius J Reilly, our antihero protagonist’s massive and disheveled physicality, his pride, his snobbery, and the knowing detail of the only place he could ever possibly stand to live in, which is The City that Care Forgot. Holmes department store, studying the crowd of people for signs of bad taste in dress.” In the shadow under the green visor of the cap Ignatius J Reilly’s supercilious blue and yellow eyes looked down upon the other people waiting under the clock at the D.H. The green earflaps, full of large ears and uncut hair and the fine bristles that grew in the ears themselves, stuck out on either side like turn signals indicating two directions at once…. Right at the beginning of A Confederacy of Dunces we immediately know what’s up: “A green hunting cap squeezed the top of the fleshy balloon of a head. A reassessment on the 40th anniversary of A Confederacy of Dunces, a novel that many consider one of the funniest ever written by an American.Ī Confederacy of Duncesby John Kennedy Toole.
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