I just finished A Confederacy of Dunces and I feel compelled to record my thoughts

First I would say I went into the book with not a ton of expectations, I knew many considered it to be very funny and that it won a Pulitzer. It got my attention due to my love for Catch 22. I did find it very funny but for most of the book what really grabbed me was the depiction of a time and place that no longer exists (granted I think there are many exaggerations and fladerizations however I think one can read between the lines and come to a sense of the reality). The characters are also great albeit many are distasteful but in my opinion that is what makes them real. I came away feeling like every character had reason for being the way they were by the end of the book and even their worse attributes made sense and to me very much reflected the reality of how real people live and develop. I think I could discuss every character at some length but for now I will only focus on a few.

Jones was my favorite character for most of the book. I really respected Toole’s depiction of him. Toole depicts the reality of his existence and problems in an unflinching way (granted both of us are white). The unfairness and struggle that Jones must endure as black man in the south in 1962 is in the reader’s face and can see why the depiction would’ve been controversial in the period when Toole first sought publication. There are humorous events and circumstances around Jones but Jones himself is not a joke, he is a real man trying to make his way in society which structurally limits his paths forward. I could sympathize with the reader that found the conclusion to Jones’s story to be a bit saccharine or frivolously optimistic but I was happy with the implication that Fortuna was smiling upon him in the end and he would have a chance at a better life.

I of course must talk about Ignatius, for most of the book he is the protagonist and main buffoon. He is literally the prototypical neckbeard in a time where in not sure the archetype even existed (that is another one of my main appreciations of the book is Toole’s prefiguring of so many types of people that exists in mass today). He is a fool and luddite, an irrational medievalist promoting a world view that is so arcane and obscure so as to be completely confusing. He lives his life according to Boethius (i am very grateful I had read On the Consolation of Philosophy prior to reading this) and Batman. For the majority of the book I chuckled at Ignatius’s antics without much emotional investment but that changed for a little toward the end. This excerpt was the first time I began to see him as more than just a joke. “Ignatius felt as alone as he had felt on that dark day in high school when in a chemistry laboratory his experiment had exploded, burning his eyebrows off and frightening him. The shock and terror had made him wet his pants, and no one in the laboratory would notice him, not even the instructor, who hated him sincerely for similar explosions in the past.” He was a man-boy apart who struggled to find genuine companionship and warmth. His dysfunctional family relationship with his mother and absence of father gave him no real safe home. He was only close to his dog which seemingly kept him in reality while it was alive but his dog’s passing and the subsequent dismissal of his grief and mocking of his mourning broke him. I now struggle not to see him as a poor high school boy who retreated into himself after his one friend left him and he was derided for his grief. To me that is the part that explains his world view and dysfunction; a tragic withdrawal to a way of thinking that is so unrelatable it keeps him isolated while also allowing him to understand why it happened (in his mind). In the end Myrna ends up as his salvation because she is the only other person who will engage with his delusions (largely due to her own delusions) without ridicule or dismissiveness. In the end his life only improves by going out in the world and leaving New Orleans to be with someone else in genuine connection (it is not clear to me if there are any romantic connotations to the reunion or not but I don’t think it really matters). Ignatius is mostly a benign man in my opinion who doesn’t seek to do harm but he can be a very reprehensible character at times who lets his trauma drive poor behavior. (is that not the type of person we can see all over the place?) To me this speaks to the contemporary relevance of the book and true solution of the neckbeard type person, they must go into the world and try to form and have connections with others because the only other alternative is perpetual suffering.

Lastly I want to talk about the author because I think more than most books his life is instrumental in understanding the work. I desperately wish he hadn't killed himself, I would love to know if my interpretations are at all intended. He was a far more productive and functional character than Ignatius but in skimming his biography I think the parallels are evident. He was clearly a brilliant and charismatic man (as seen from accounts of his time teaching) but also had a strong sense of isolation and otherness. Even though the book ends on an optimistic note the fate of the author sharpens a tragic edge to the conclusion. I can’t help but feel the ending is the type of thing he wished would have happened for him but it clearly never did. Someone to see him at his most bare, desperate, and disgusting; someone to still want to help him anyway, someone to see the value and virtues within him despite the grime. (I could very well be wrong on this part but this is my instinct)

TL;DR great book, depicts types of people that are relevant to this day, has a lot more to say about contemporary society than it is given credit for.