A lazy, pretentious intellectual with an alcoholic mother who wants to have him sectioned and a Jewish beatnik minx who is constantly trying to outdo him, as the hero of a classic novel? Described by writer Walker Percy, who helped get the novel published, the protagonist is a "slob extraordinary, a mad Oliver Hardy, a fat Don Quixote, a perverse Thomas Aquinas rolled into one".
A Confederacy of Dunces is the one of only two novels from American author John Kennedy Toole, published posthumously eleven years after his suicide. It became a cult classic, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1981 and is now regarded as a modern American Masterpiece.
Years after I first read Dunces, I met the Cyclist, a chubby Lothario who loved duelling, married women and riding his BMX. Maybe it was his grandiose vocabulary or his antiquated dress style that made me forever more connect Dunces protagonist, Ignatius J. Reilly, with the Cyclist.
I told the Cyclist about all this one Summers morning while he was relaxing outside my shop after visiting some bored housewives in Bridgetown. “I can’t read the blasted book without picturing you as Ignatius Reilly now,” I told him.
He just laughed. “I’m not at all surprised my dear compeer. Many a book has been inspired by my adventures and romantic entanglements.”
“You mean sleeping with middle aged women while their husbands are at work and then making your escape on a battered bicycle?”
“Exactly. Ignatius Reilly is probably just a thinly veiled impersonation of my own good self.”
“I think Toole wrote it before you were born.”
“A poor vindication,” the Cyclist sneered and got back to eating a multi pack of marsbars which he had stolen from his latest conquests cupboard.
John Kennedy Toole failed to get published during his lifetime and, following the rejection of A Confederacy of Dunces by Simon & Schuster, he abandoned writing and set off in his car on a trip around the country. Suffering from paranoia and depression due in part to his literary failures, he committed suicide by gassing himself in his car at the age of 31. Only through the efforts of his mother and writer Walker Percy did A Confederacy of Dunces finally get published.
Dunces takes it’s name from a Jonathan Swift quote, "When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him." Incidentally, the Cyclist has the same quote printed in gold lettering on the seven identical pairs of Chinese replica Polo boxer shorts that he owns.
It’s protagonist, Ignatius J. Reilly, is a well education but lazy dreamer, penning his Magnus Opus on writing pads that he keeps hidden under his bed, living with his mother in 1960s New Orleans. His misadventures with a selection of colourful characters, attempts to stay out of the mental institution and get meaningful employment makes up the plot of this comedic novel.
“Canned food is a perversion,” Ignatius said. “I suspect that it is ultimately very damaging to the soul.”
Dunces is now an honoured part of New Orleans culture due to the brilliant descriptions of the city and use of local dialect in the novel. A bronze statue of Ignatius Reilly now stands proudly in the city which Toole turned into a character in his novel.
As well as making the city come alive, he also managed to give life to some marvellous comic creations like Santa Battaglia, an grandmother with an intense dislike for Ignatius who wants him sectioned; Claude Robichaux, an old man constantly vigilante for communist infiltrators; and Lana Lee, a pornographic model.
“Sounds a tad far fetched to me,” the Cyclist tells me, as he helps himself to my lunch, stopping only to give me a look of distain at the lack of abundant fillings in my sandwiches before he devours them, “Characters like that do not exist in the real world.”
Thelma Kennedy Tooles persistence and belief in her son’s legacy finally succeeded in getting A Confederacy of Dunces published, but the grieving mother was working off a carbon copy of the original novel. To this day the original manuscript remains lost. Many believe that Toole destroyed the novel in a fit of depression but there is a chance it is still out there, making it one of the most valuable lost manuscripts in modern American literature.
“Between notes, he had contemplated means of destroying Myrna Minkoff but had reached no satisfactory conclusion. His most promising scheme had involved getting a book on munitions from the library, constructing a bomb, and mailing it in plain paper to Myrna. Then he remembered that his library card had been revoked.”
A Confederacy of Dunces is a novel that was ahead of its time, brazenly defying conventional plotlines and the standard three act structure. Maybe that’s why famous editor Robert Gottlieb, who was responsible for getting Catch 22 into print, rejected the novel, suggesting that the writer had talent but the novel lacked a motive. Gottlieb said, “that with all its wonderfulness, the book – even better plotted (and still better plottable) – does not have a reason; it’s a brilliant exercise in invention, but unlike CATCH [22] and MOTHER’S KISSES and V and the others, it isn’t really about anything. And that’s something no one can do anything about.”
Unknowingly Gottliebs rejection, combined with existing mental health issues, set John Kennedy Toole on the road to an early self inflicted death. A Confederacy of Dunces remains as an everlasting monument to his lost genius.
The Cyclist wrapped his matching purple scarf, gloves and beret, and his full length woolen coat around his ample body and mounted his BMX. “Maybe I’ll read that book someday compeer,” he cried, gesticulating wildly, “Or better still I’ll author my own biography.” He scratched himself suddenly, “By the way, do you have any books on STDs?”
I shook my head sadly and the Cyclist rode off, very slowly, into the sunset.
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