Book Tamers| book reviews

A Confederacy of Dunces found me completely unprepared. I never thought I would discover such a humorous masterpiece or such a character.

The story behind the book is a sad one, though. The author committed suicide in 1969, before seeing his book published. His mother found the manuscript and led a tough battle with the publishers in order for them to read it. Embarrassed by her mourning, they finally read the book written by Toole. And they couldn’t believe their eyes what they discovered.

A Confederacy of Dunces is very hard to label, a book which stands out because of its characters, the absurd situations and of Ignatius J. Reilly.

Ignatius is a massive young man, with a university degree, eccentric and idealistic. Although his intelligence and education could ensure him a successful career, Ignatius lives in isolation, together with his mother. He spends his days writing one sheet of paper after another about The Middle Ages and the decay of mankind, hoping, with great patience, to write a great book, because, after all, neither was Rome “built in a day”; or he watches films, to criticize the decadent spirit of contemporary society.

A rebel when it comes to clothing, Ignatius becomes easy to identify on the streets of the New Orleans of the ‘60s: his grotesque suit becomes characteristic and the green hunting cap is transformed into a genuine leit motif of the novel.

Apparently an independent, ungrateful spirit, Ignatius is in fact terrified by solitude and this is why he constantly needs maternal care. A paranoid and a valetudinarian person, he lives his life without any every day worry. Concentrated only upon himself, upon his body- the valve being his main concern- Ignatius seems to have infinite spares of selfishness and carelessness.

Through a series of comic accidents, Ignatius is taken by force out of his den and thrown into the working field. His personality finds here an even larger space of manifestation and the interaction with the other characters gives the novel its mad humor. A clerk at a trousers factory, a peddler, or disguised in a pirate’s costume, are the jobs that Ignatius finally takes. But everywhere he walks by, like a devastating storm, he only leaves behind disaster and chaos.

Completely careless towards the surrounding world, Ignatius continues his rich, interior existence, unmoved.

The secondary characters are shaped flawlessly, they are vibrant and comic. From the mother who mostly loves drinking and bowling, to the exotic dancer who trains her parrot to undress her, to the rich, bored woman, with psychologist aspirations, tormenting a poor senile old lady, up to the police officer punished to arrest suspect persons (a ruthless satire of the “witch hunt”, the phobia of communists infiltrated in the American society). To this group another important character is added, young Myrna, Ignatius’s college girlfriend who believes that sex solves any problem, including that of the minorities. Their correspondence appears throughout the novel and Myrna’s attempts to submit Ignatius to a Freudian psychological analysis are moments of remarkable irony.

A cult-book, A Confederacy of Dunces brought Toole a posthumous Pulitzer (1981). It is a novel which I recommend to anyone who wants to read an intelligent, ironic book with deep implications. This is because, leaving aside the humor of Ignatius’s story, this novel is a troubling story of man’s alienation in society.

Written by Ana-Maria