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A review by brennanaphone
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
2.0
I'm really not sure how this won the Pulitzer Prize, except that Walker Percy took the manuscript under his wing and shepherded into acclaim. And, based on his intro, Percy and I don't look for the same stuff in books, since he liked "its ethnic whites--and one black in whom Toole has achieved the near-impossible, a superb comic character of immense wit and resourcefulness without the least trace of Rastus minstrelsy." I think old Percy needed to read more Black authors.
Anyway, the book is okay. At its core it is farce that goes on way too long. I was really into the idea of a book where the bloviating, self-important white dude is the butt of the joke (although, reading other people's views, some folks actually identify with him, what??). His long-winded and painfully verbose rants are sometimes uncomfortably relatable and often hilarious, especially in his correspondence with Myrna, who is also painfully obtuse. But at some point you realize that everyone is the butt of the joke, that the author skewers everyone, often with boring stereotypes for lesbians, gay men, and Black people, and that a lot of what is supposed to make Ignatius a ridiculous and grotesque figure is his weight. Cool. So there's just no real warmth or empathy or growth or anything. And with farce that's usually fine, but it has to be a lot faster and a lot punchier for that to work, and this is 400 plodding pages long.
I have never been to New Orleans, so I will have to trust others when they say that the regional dialogue is note-perfect. It does have some legitimately funny writing, but it is also incredibly repetitive in its word choice, which undercuts a lot of the humor. You can really hear about Ignatius's pyloric valve, his belching, his "massive" tongue, his slurs, his mother's alcoholism, people screaming, Mrs. Levy's exercise board, Miss Trixie snarling, and Jones saying "Whoa!" only so many times before you just kind of glaze over. I can admire some of the writing choices, but I don't think I actually enjoyed more than a handful of pages of this book.
Anyway, the book is okay. At its core it is farce that goes on way too long. I was really into the idea of a book where the bloviating, self-important white dude is the butt of the joke (although, reading other people's views, some folks actually identify with him, what??). His long-winded and painfully verbose rants are sometimes uncomfortably relatable and often hilarious, especially in his correspondence with Myrna, who is also painfully obtuse. But at some point you realize that everyone is the butt of the joke, that the author skewers everyone, often with boring stereotypes for lesbians, gay men, and Black people, and that a lot of what is supposed to make Ignatius a ridiculous and grotesque figure is his weight. Cool. So there's just no real warmth or empathy or growth or anything. And with farce that's usually fine, but it has to be a lot faster and a lot punchier for that to work, and this is 400 plodding pages long.
I have never been to New Orleans, so I will have to trust others when they say that the regional dialogue is note-perfect. It does have some legitimately funny writing, but it is also incredibly repetitive in its word choice, which undercuts a lot of the humor. You can really hear about Ignatius's pyloric valve, his belching, his "massive" tongue, his slurs, his mother's alcoholism, people screaming, Mrs. Levy's exercise board, Miss Trixie snarling, and Jones saying "Whoa!" only so many times before you just kind of glaze over. I can admire some of the writing choices, but I don't think I actually enjoyed more than a handful of pages of this book.