 | |
| Author | John Kennedy Toole |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | Black comedy, tragicomedy |
| Published | 1980 |
| Publisher | Louisiana State University Press |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | Print (hardback & paperback), audiobook, e-book |
| Pages | 405 (paperback)[1] |
| Award | Pulitzer Prize (1981) |
| ISBN | 0-8071-0657-7 |
| OCLC | 5336849 |
| 813/.5/4 | |
| LC Class | PS3570.O54 C66 1980 |
A Confederacy of Dunces is a picaresque novel by American novelist John Kennedy Toole which reached publication in 1980, eleven years after Toole's death.[2] Published through the efforts of writer Walker Percy (who also contributed a foreword) and Toole's mother, Thelma, the book became first a cult classic, then a mainstream success; it earned Toole a posthumous Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1981, and is now considered a canonical work of modern literature of the Southern United States.[3]
The book's title refers to an epigram from Jonathan Swift's essay Thoughts on Various Subjects, Moral and Diverting: "When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him."
Dunces is a picaresque novel featuring the misadventures of protagonist Ignatius J. Reilly, a lazy, overweight, misanthropic, self-styled scholar who lives at home with his mother. He is an educated but slothful 30-year-old man living in the Uptown neighborhood of early-1960s New Orleans who, in his quest for employment, has various adventures with colorful French Quarter characters. Toole wrote the novel in 1963 during his last few months in Puerto Rico. It is hailed for its accurate depictions of New Orleans dialects. Toole based Reilly in part on his college professor friend Bob Byrne. Byrne's slovenly, eccentric behavior was anything but professorial, and Reilly mirrored him in these respects. The character was also based on Toole himself, and several personal experiences served as inspiration for passages in the novel. While at Tulane, Toole filled in for a friend at a job as a hot tamale cart vendor, and worked at a family owned and operated clothing factory. Both of these experiences were later adopted into his fiction.
- ^ Toole 1980.
- ^ Podgorski, Daniel (August 23, 2016). "Peopling Picaresque: On the Well-drawn Characters of John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces". The Gemsbok. Archived from the original on November 30, 2016. Retrieved November 29, 2016.
- ^ Giemza, Bryan (Spring 2004). "Ignatius Rising: The Life of John Kennedy Toole". Southern Cultures (review). 10 (1). Cambridge: Chadwyck-Healey: 97–9. doi:10.1353/scu.2004.0007. ISSN 1534-1488. S2CID 145576623. Archived from the original on 2016-03-03. Retrieved 2020-01-30.