A Confederacy of Dunces

Book #29 in my 2005 50 book challenge was the 1981 Pulitzer Prize winning novel A Confederacy of Dunces, by John Kennedy Toole.

Most of the book was written by Toole in 1961 while he was serving in the Army in Puerto Rico teaching English. In 1966 the novel was rejected by Simon & Schuster. Three years later Toole committed suicide, never seeing his book reach publication (there's a subtle joke about this in Sideways). After his death, Toole's mother began working tirelessly in an attempt to get it published. After seven years of rejection she finally was able to convince novelist Walker Percy to read the book. Percy, who only relented because he was tired of turning her down, read the book and was blown away. With his support, the book was eventually published by the Louisiana State University Press, and the rest is history.

The novel's main character is Ignatius J. Reilly a Quixotic, selfish, over-educated, oaf of a man who lives at home with his mother in New Orleans. The novel is a tragi-comedy with many subplots, but most of the story revolves around Ignatius' journey into the work force and the hilarious calamities that ensue. It would be difficult to explain all of the various twists and turns in the book so I'll skip that here, but if you're interested there are plenty of online reviews available which go into more depth about the plot.

From most of the reviews I've read it looks like people either love the book or hate it. I don't know if I'd go quite so far as to say I loved it, but I definitely enjoyed it quite a bit. Given the glowing reviews the book had received I had very high expectations coming in, which usually only leads to disappointment. Fortunately, in this case the book was able to live up to most of the hype, and ended up being well worth reading.

There were plans in place to make a movie version of the book starring Will Ferrell, Lily Tomlin, Mos Def and Drew Barrymore, but those plans have recently fallen apart due to politics over the property rights.