Review: John Kennedy Toole's "A Confederacy of Dunces"

A confederacy of dunces is the term Jonathan Swift once used to describe the idiots who congregate around genius in order to tear it down, a conspiracy of stupidity which must inevitably swarm around all those of supreme talent and intellect because the unenlightened cannot possibly hope to understand true greatness and thus seek to destroy it instead. If that all sounds slightly pompous and arrogant to you then you'd be thinking exactly like John Kennedy Toole was when he titled his novel about a more than slightly pompous and arrogant man named Ignatius J. Reilly.

As you probably already suspect (or indeed know) "A Confederacy of Dunces" is a humorous novel that details the inevitable misadventures of its gloriously deluded central character as he attempts to overcome what he sees as the mental and moral ineptitudes of the world around him. Due to sudden financial hardship the thirty year old, overweight, college-grad unemployed layabout has to get a job except that involves working for the very people his despises at the bottom rungs of the corporate ladders because he has done nothing but sponge off his poor at-the-end-of-her-tether mother since he finished his masters.

This is all a perfect set-up for a series of preposterous events involving, amongst other things, a party with its own sex dungeon, a stripper being undressed on stage by a parrot and a policeman hiding in a toilet dressed as a cowboy. Ignatius acts as a catalyst, bumbling through the French Quarter of New Orleans and triggering one insane scene after another.

The problem with writing comedy though is that it can be really difficult to get right on the page. On screen or on stage something can be imbued with humour by the actor's sense of timing and voice but in the written form all this has to be successfully conveyed through the readers imagination. It's a really hard trick to pull off and in order to manage it a writer has to create an exceptional narrative voice you can hear in your head as you read (see Douglas Adams or Terry Pratchett) if there is any hope you genuinely laughing aloud whilst reading.

Fortunately it is a trick which Toole has nailed, thanks in most part to the convincing ridiculousness of his protagonist. The novel regularly gives us insight into Ignatius's own interior monologue as well as access to some of his letters and personal writings which adds to the multi-layered farcical flavour whilst providing the opportunity to take clever pot shots at American life in the sixties. A wonderfully entertaining book for all fans of self-indulgent American comedy. 

Rating: 9/10