“A Confederacy of Dunces” is a comic novel by John Kennedy Toole, which details the adventures of a scabrous, slothful, and hippopotamically fat medievalist named Ignatius J. Reilly, who lives in New Orleans with his overweening mother, Irene. The book became a New York Times bestseller, sold millions of copies, inspired the likes of John Belushi, Will Ferrell, and Steven Soderbergh, and earned a place on the top 10 most influential authors list.
The author, John Kennedy Toole, was distressed by a publisher’s rejection, haunted by paranoid thoughts, and oppressed by the obligation to support his enfeebled father and overbearing mother. The odds of real Trump-Russia collusion no longer look that long. In April, the cruelest month, or Confederate History Month, is celebrated in Virginia, where the state is buzzing over Gov. John Kennedy Toole’s “A Confederacy of Dunces”.
The novel, published by Louisiana State University Press, won fame and fortune and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1981. The author’s hero, Ignatius J. Reilly, is described as “huge, obese, fractious, fastidious”. The novel has been praised for its humor and its ability to explore themes of anxiety, paranoia, and the role of New Orleans in fictional narratives.
📹 Billy Connolly on A Confederacy Of Dunces
From BBC’s Billy Connolly – Made in Scotland Series 1 Episode 2 Billy espouses the act of libraries and book giving then …
📹 The Last Time The NY Times Told Me What Books to Read!
Memories of how the 2006 “What is the best work of American fiction in the past 25 years?” Prompt from the New York Times …
I never was enough of a reader to be shaped by such a list (or even notice one). You were already a strong reader when you came upon that list. I found new authors either in an anthology or a mention, probably in an introduction (which already indicates “classic” as opposed to contemporary category). You as a BookTuber are in a position to create your own list, and I might trust your 100 before the motley crew that developed the New York Times list. I’m still deficient on contemporary authors, but I’m short on pressing reasons to try improve myself.
Uncanny how parallel our reading paths were. I too read almost exclusively nonfiction until high school, naively thinking at the time that fiction was a waste of time and it was better to learn from nonfiction. Then in 11th grade a particular literature class and teacher had a big influence on me, and soon thereafter I discovered Clifton Fadiman’s Lifetime Reading Plan. For a couple of decades I gorged on the classics (I’m 65 so quite a bit older than you) and read almost no contemporary literature until I saw that same NYT list from 2006 and began reading from that list as an intro to good quality contemporary lit. Weird to come across your article and someone who did the same things in about the same way. Today I read a good blend of things and I’m glad for the new NYT list. Thank you for this article. I’ll be sure to check out some of your others.
The thought of creating this arbitrary list of checkpoints and groundwork to read other books and unlock other parts of the canon is so real. “Can’t read X until I read Y and probably Z too for context, and maybe W to make sure I might like X”– and so on. This strategy has dominated the last three years of my life– and even when I try and shrug it off and just read what I want to, I wake up from a daze and realize my little mini tbr’s are just don’t the same thing. But even as you illustrate in this article– it’s not usually a waste of time. And yet it always feels like a diversion (to me at least). I wish I understood why this is so engrained in my decision-making making and that lists like the NYT (and even the one The Atlantic just put out for the Great American Novels a few months ago) “notable books” didn’t drive so much of my reading. Side note– I don’t think any author saw more backlash on my side of Twitter from the list than Richard Powers. Everyone seemed to universally clown The Overstory as a “Pulitzer for stupid people”. Never heard a word of negativity before this list and now all of a sudden he’s like a Malcolm Gladwell-level pseudointellectual. No idea if that’s just my niche or if I didn’t get the memo that Powers is out.
Reading Ulysses on an airplane sounds like having a root canal on an off-road safari. Although I remember spending a long flight reading Absalom, Absalom!, which has become my favorite Faulkner novel. Maybe modernism works best in transit. I remember being very influenced by that previous list as well. Although now that I’ve read more widely, I think it’s an unforgivable oversight that Pynchon’s Mason & Dixon was not included. That might be my vote for the greatest American novel.
Jack, I have a question and a comment. First, I did what you did only I found that there were so darn many of the books on that list that I not only didn’t like, they either bored me silly or I just was not interested, so I stopped reading the list! However, I do have another question for you: Have you ever seen a Classics List? A true Greek, Roman, Mary Beards, Mary Renault, Homer, the guys in the 12 Caesars books. Those books on ancient history and the ones the ‘classist” folks read? Those are the ones I can craving at the moment. Even Google hasn’t helped me. Thoughts please!! I have my notebook and pen out (yep, I have read 90% of the Penguin books on the subject. THANK YOU SO MUCH !!!! Oh there is one person “Goldsworthy” who does history of a particular time period and mine is on its way. Really appreciate any ideas and suggestions. Lee
On a sentence by sentence basis, Updike is one of the greatest talents in our recent national literature. But man some of his novels are just bad despite being stylistically so good. I wrestle with the question: Is Updikes recycling of themes (religion/adultery) for 50 years a demonstration of his lack of ingenuity or is it noble that he stays true to what he knows? I’ve read a dozen of his novels, poetry collections, non-fiction, etc. and it remains a love/hate relationship.