A Confederacy of Dunces and the Parable of Stravinsky

At our book group last night, we discussed John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces. One of the first questions from the group was: "Why on earth did you assign this?" Directed at me. Because I did.

The book was not a hit. But this was my third time through, and I found myself having to defending it. I called it "harrowingly funny" and "ahead of its time." The group was not buying it even a little bit.

There is a famously exaggerated story about the first performance of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. There are several versions, but they all end in what we do know is true: at its 1913 premiere in Paris, a chunk of the audience hiss'd and boo'd, and the night descended into loud, chaotic disruption. (The exact details are fuzzy, and the stories only got wilder over time.)

Explanations for why everyone lost it span the gamut: the choreography was too “primitive,” the costumes were too “savage,” the staging was strange, the music itself sounded like noise. Any of these could be right and all of them could be wrong. What we know is: The Rite of Spring caused a full-on hubbub on its opening night.

And then, less than a year later, in 1914, Rite of Spring was performed again in Paris — this time as a concert piece, without the ballet — and it was a success. Stravinsky, who had just recently watched his work get shouted down, was now being celebrated; by some accounts he was literally carried out on people’s shoulders.

I share the Parable of Stravinsky because I want to suggest that sometimes our first instincts about something — especially if we dislike something — can be misleading. Sometimes we need to be exposed to the thing, have all of our Feelings about it, and then, spent, return with that prior exposure and a different brain, better able to appreciate what may not have worked before.

With A Confederacy of Dunces, the first time I read it was in the 1990s and I found the relationship between Ignatius and his mother too deeply uncomfortable for me to see any humor in it. I also was, and still am, very much a Right Doing Person Who Believes in Consequences. So you can imagine how Ignatius as a person went over with me. I did find some spots funny the first time — but mostly I felt deeply uncomfortable.

I read it again in 2021, if the inside note in my paperback is to be believed. I reviewed my notes, scribbled in the margins, before reading it again this time, in 2026, and I seemed to be finding more of it funny. I also noted the places that still made me uncomfortable — especially that mother/son relationship.

This most recent time through — I read it at the end of March — all of it clicked. I had the experience that I think John Kennedy Toole wanted the reader to have reading his novel. The squeal of delight I gave, this time around, when I saw the name Levy Pant, is unbecoming a man of my stature. Et pur si muovi.

I think I had to learn how to read A Confederacy of Dunces by having that negative first experience, and then coming back to the novel knowing more of what I know.