Dunces is a picaresque novel featuring the misadventures of protagonist Ignatius J. Reilly, a lazy, obese, misanthropic, self-styled scholar. He is an educated but slothful 30-year-old living with his mother in the Uptown neighborhood of early-1960s New Orleans. In his quest for employment, he has adventures with colorful French Quarter characters. Toole wrote the first draft in 1963 during his last few months in Puerto Rico. Critics liked the accurate depictions of New Orleans dialects. Toole based Reilly in part on his professor friend Bob Byrne. Byrne's slovenly, eccentric behavior was anything but professorial. Reilly resembled Toole; Toole's experiences served as inspiration for episodes. While at Tulane University, Toole filled in for a friend as a hot-tamale cart vendor and worked for a family who owned and operated a clothing factory.
Synopsis
Ignatius Jacques Reilly is an overweight and unemployed 30-year-old with a master's degree in Medieval History. He lives with his mother, Irene Reilly. He loathes the world, which he feels has lost the values of geometry and theology. One afternoon Reilly's mother drives him "downtown in the old Plymouth, and while she was at the doctor's seeing about her arthritis, Ignatius had bought some sheet music at Werlein's for his trumpet and a new string for his lute." While Reilly waits for his mother, Officer Angelo Mancuso approaches Reilly and demands that Ignatius produce identification. Affronted and outraged by Mancuso's zeal and officiousness, Reilly protests his innocence to the crowd while denouncing the city's vices and the graft of the local police. An elderly man, Claude Robichaux, takes Reilly's side and denounces Mancuso and the police as communists. In the resulting uproar, Mancuso arrests Robichaux while Reilly and his embarrassed mother escape and take refuge in a bar.
There, Mrs. Reilly drinks too much. On the way home, she crashes her car. The bills for the accident total $1,020, a sizable amount of money in early 1960s New Orleans and which would be a little over $10,000 in 2023. To help his mother pay for the accident, Ignatius must work for the first time in years.
What follows is a series of adventures that introduce characters and their interactions as Ignatius flounders from one low-wage job to another. Ignatius obsesses over his wardrobe, verbally abuses his mother, and frequents movie theaters, where he condemns the actors and actresses. The novel explores the psyche of a man who, every time he feels stress, observes the action of his pyloric valve. Reilly maintains an adversarial relationship, and possibly a flirtation, with the politically liberal Myrna Minkoff, his only friend from college.
Major characters
Ignatius J. Reilly
Ignatius Jacques Reilly is something of a modern Don Quixote—eccentric, idealistic, and creative, sometimes to the point of delusion.[2] In his foreword to the book, Walker Percy describes Ignatius as a "slob extraordinary, a mad Oliver Hardy, a fat Don Quixote, a perverse Thomas Aquinas rolled into one". He disdains modernity, particularly pop culture. The disdain becomes his obsession: he goes to movies in order to mock their perversity and express his outrage with the contemporary world's lack of "theology and geometry". He prefers the scholastic philosophy of the Middle Ages, and the Early Medieval philosopher Boethius in particular.[4] However, he also enjoys many modern comforts and conveniences and is given to claiming that the rednecks of rural Louisiana hate all modern technology, which they associate with unwanted change. The workings of his pyloric valve play an important role in his life, reacting strongly to incidents in a fashion that he likens to Cassandra in terms of prophetic significance.[5]
Ignatius believes he does not belong in the world and that his failings are the work of some higher power. He refers to the goddess Fortuna as having spun him downward on her wheel of fortune. Ignatius loves to eat; his masturbatory fantasies lead in strange directions. His mockery of obscene images is portrayed as a defensive posture to hide their titillating effect on him. Although considering himself to have an expansive and learned worldview, Ignatius has an aversion to ever leaving the town of his birth and frequently bores friends and strangers with the story of his abortive journey out of New Orleans, to Baton Rouge on a Greyhound Scenicruiser, which Ignatius recounts as a traumatic ordeal of extreme horror.
Myrna Minkoff
Myrna Minkoff, referred to by Ignatius as "that minx," is a Jewish beatnik from New York City. Ignatius met her while she was in college in New Orleans.[2] Although their political, social, religious, and personal orientations could hardly be more different, Myrna and Ignatius fascinate one another. The novel refers to Myrna and Ignatius as having engaged in tag-team attacks on the teachings of professors. For most of the novel, she is seen only in the regular correspondence which the two sustain after her return to New York, a correspondence heavily weighted with sexual analysis from Myrna and contempt for her apparent sacrilegious activity by Ignatius. Officially, they deplore everything the other stands for. Although neither will admit it, their correspondence indicates that, separated though they are by half a continent, they want to impress each other.
Irene Reilly
Mrs. Irene Reilly is Ignatius's mother. She has been widowed for 21 years. At first, she allows Ignatius his space and drives him where he needs to go, but over the course of the novel she learns to stand up for herself. She has a drinking problem, most frequently indulging in muscatel, although Ignatius exaggerates that she is a raving, abusive drunk.[2]
She falls for Claude Robichaux, who has a railroad pension and rental properties. At the end of the novel, she decides she will marry Claude. But first, she agrees with Santa Battaglia (who has not only recently become Mrs. Reilly's new best friend, but also harbors an intense dislike for Ignatius) that Ignatius is insane and arranges to have him sent to a mental hospital.
Others
Santa Battaglia, a "grammaw" who is friends with Mrs. Reilly and has a marked disdain for Ignatius
Claude Robichaux, an old man constantly on the lookout for any "communiss" who might infiltrate the United States; he takes an interest in protecting Irene
Angelo Mancuso, an inept police officer, the nephew of Santa Battaglia, who, after an abortive attempt to arrest Ignatius as a "suspicious character," features prominently in the novel as Ignatius's self-perceived nemesis
Lana Lee, a pornographic model who runs the "Night of Joy," a downscale French Quarter strip club
George, Lana's distributor, who sells photographs of her to high-school children
Darlene, a goodhearted but none-too-bright girl, who aspires to be a "Night of Joy" stripper, with a pet cockatoo
Burma Jones, a black janitor for the "Night of Joy" who holds on to his below-minimum wage job only to avoid being arrested for vagrancy
Mr. Clyde, the frustrated owner of Paradise Vendors, a hot dog vendor business, who inadvisedly employs Ignatius as a vendor
Gus Levy, the reluctant, mostly absentee owner of Levy Pants, an inherited family business in the Bywater neighborhood where Ignatius briefly works
Mrs. Levy, Gus's wife, who attempts to psychoanalyze her husband and Miss Trixie despite being completely unqualified to do so
Mr. Gonzalez, the meek office manager at Levy Pants
Dorian Greene, a flamboyant French Quarter homosexual who puts on elaborate parties
Frieda Club, Betty Bumper, and Liz Steele, a trio of aggressive lesbians who run afoul of Ignatius
Dr. Talc, a mediocre professor at Tulane who had the misfortune of teaching Myrna and Ignatius
Miss Annie, the disgruntled neighbor of the Reillys who professes an addiction to headache medicine
Ignatius at the movies
Toole provides comical descriptions of two of the films Ignatius watches without naming them; they can be recognized as Billy Rose's Jumbo and That Touch of Mink, both Doris Day features released in 1962.[6] In another passage, Ignatius declines to see another film, a "widely praised Swedish drama about a man who was losing his soul". This is most likely Ingmar Bergman's Winter Light, released in early 1963. In another passage, Irene Reilly recalls the night Ignatius was conceived: after she and her husband viewed Red Dust, released in October 1932.[7]
The book is famous for its rich depiction of New Orleans and the city's dialects, including Yat.[8][9] Many locals and writers think that it is the best and most accurate depiction of the city in a work of fiction.[10]
A bronze statue of Ignatius J. Reilly can be found under the clock on the down-river side of the 800 block of Canal Street, New Orleans, the former site of the D. H. Holmes Department Store, now the Hyatt French Quarter Hotel. The statue mimics the opening scene: Ignatius waits for his mother under the D.H. Holmes clock, clutching a Werlein's shopping bag, dressed in a hunting cap, flannel shirt, baggy pants and scarf, 'studying the crowd of people for signs of bad taste.' The statue is modeled on New Orleans actor John "Spud" McConnell, who portrayed Ignatius in a stage version of the novel.
Various local businesses are mentioned in addition to D. H. Holmes, including Werlein's Music Store and local cinemas such as the Prytania Theater. Some readers from elsewhere assume Ignatius's favorite soft drink, Dr. Nut, to be fictitious, but it was an actual local soft drink brand of the era. The "Paradise Hot Dogs" vending carts are an easily recognized satire of those actually branded "Lucky Dogs".
Structure
The structure of A Confederacy of Dunces reflects the structure of Ignatius's favorite book, Boethius' The Consolation of Philosophy.[11] Like Boethius' book, A Confederacy of Dunces is divided into chapters that are further divided into a varying number of subchapters. Key parts of some chapters are outside of the main narrative. In Consolation, sections of narrative prose alternate with metrical verse. In Confederacy, such narrative interludes vary more widely in form and include light verse, journal entries by Ignatius, and also letters between himself and Myrna. A copy of The Consolation of Philosophy within the narrative itself also becomes an explicit plot device in several ways.
The difficult path to publication
As outlined in the introduction to a later revised edition, the book would never have been published if Toole's mother had not found a smeared carbon copy of the manuscript left in the house following Toole's 1969 death at 31. She was persistent despite rejections.
Thelma repeatedly telephoned Walker Percy, an author and college instructor at Loyola University New Orleans, and demanded that he read it. He initially resisted; however, as he recounts in the book's foreword:
...the lady was persistent, and it somehow came to pass that she stood in my office handing me the hefty manuscript. There was no getting out of it; only one hope remained—that I could read a few pages and that they would be bad enough for me, in good conscience, to read no farther. Usually I can do just that. Indeed the first paragraph often suffices. My only fear was that this one might not be bad enough, or might be just good enough, so that I would have to keep reading. In this case I read on. And on. First with the sinking feeling that it was not bad enough to quit, then with a prickle of interest, then a growing excitement, and finally an incredulity: surely it was not possible that it was so good.[12]
While Tulane University in New Orleans retains a collection of Toole's papers, and some early drafts have been found, the location of Toole's last manuscript is unknown.[13]
Adaptations
In March 1984, LSU staged a musical adaptation of the book, with book and lyrics by Frank Galati and music by Edward Zelnis; actor Scott Harlan played Ignatius.[14]
Kerry Shale read the book for BBC Radio 4's Book at Bedtime in 1982, and later adapted the book into a one-man show which he performed at the Adelaide Festival in 1990,[15] at the Gate Theatre in London, and for BBC Radio.[16]
There have been repeated attempts to turn the book into a film. In 1982, Harold Ramis was to write and direct an adaptation, starring John Belushi as Ignatius and Richard Pryor as Burma Jones, but Belushi's death prevented this. Later, John Candy and Chris Farley were touted for the lead, but both of them, like Belushi, also died at an early age, leading many to ascribe a curse to the role of Ignatius.[17]
Director John Waters was interested in directing an adaptation that would have starred Divine, who also died at an early age, as Ignatius.[18]
British performer and writer Stephen Fry was at one point commissioned to adapt Toole's book for the screen.[19] He was sent to New Orleans by Paramount Pictures in 1997 to get background for a screenplay adaptation.[20]
John Goodman, a longtime resident of New Orleans, was slated to play Ignatius at one point.[21]
Various reasons are cited as to why the Soderbergh version has yet to be filmed. They include disorganization and lack of interest at Paramount Pictures, the murder of Helen Hill, the head of the Louisiana State Film Commission, and the devastating effects of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans.[17] When asked why the film was never made, Will Ferrell has said it is a "mystery".[23]
In a 2013 interview, Steven Soderbergh remarked "I think it's cursed. I'm not prone to superstition, but that project has got bad mojo on it."[25]
In November 2015, Huntington Theatre Company introduced a stage version of A Confederacy of Dunces written by Jeffrey Hatcher in their Avenue of the Arts/BU Theatre location in Boston, starring Nick Offerman as Ignatius J. Reilly. It set a record as the company's highest-grossing production.[26]
Critical reception
On November 5, 2019, BBC News included A Confederacy of Dunces on its list of the 100 most inspiring novels.[27] The book is regularly included on lists of 'most funny' or 'best comedic novel'.[28]
Walker Percy, OblSB was an American writer whose interests included philosophy and semiotics. Percy is noted for his philosophical novels set in and around New Orleans; his first, The Moviegoer, won the National Book Award for Fiction.
John Kennedy Toole was an American novelist from New Orleans, Louisiana, whose posthumously published novel, A Confederacy of Dunces, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1981; he also wrote The Neon Bible. Although several people in the literary world felt his writing skills were praiseworthy, Toole's novels were rejected during his lifetime. Due in part to these failures, he suffered from paranoia and depression, dying by suicide at the age of 31.
Ignatius is a male given name and a surname. Notable people with the name include:
The Neon Bible is John Kennedy Toole's first novel, written at the age of 16. The novel is a bildungsroman about a callow youth named David in rural Mississippi during the late 1930s to early 1950s. He learns of religious, racial, social, and sexual bigotry in the narrator's ten strongest memories, one memory per chapter. The memories begin with David on a train, escaping the past, hoping for freedom. The book is told entirely from the first person.
New Orleans English is American English native to the city of New Orleans and its metropolitan area. Native English speakers of the region actually speak a number of varieties, including the variety most recently brought in and spreading since the 20th century among white communities of the Southern United States in general ; the variety primarily spoken by black residents ; the variety spoken by Cajuns in southern Louisiana ; the variety traditionally spoken by affluent white residents of the city's Uptown and Garden District; and the variety traditionally spoken by lower middle- and working-class white residents of Eastern New Orleans, particularly the Ninth Ward. However, only the last two varieties are unique to New Orleans and are typically those referred to in the academic research as "New Orleans English". These two varieties specific to New Orleans likely developed around the turn of the nineteenth century and most noticeably combine speech features commonly associated with both New York City English and, to a lesser extent, Southern U.S. English. The noticeably New York-like characteristics include the NYC-like short-a split, non-rhoticity, th-stopping, and the recently disappearing coil–curl merger. Noticeably Southern characteristics include the fronting of and possible monophthongization of.
The Big Chief tablet is a popular writing notebook designed for young children in the United States. It is made with newsprint paper and features widely spaced lines, easier to use for those learning to write. The tablet has a prominent representation of an American Indian man in full headdress on the cover, hence the name "Big Chief".
Cassian, or Saint Cassian of Imola, or Cassius was a Christian saint of the 4th century. His feast day is August 13.
The Tulane Hullabaloo is the weekly student-run newspaper of Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana. As of 2023 Gabi Liebeler serves as 119th Editor-in-Chief. The Tulane Hullabaloo is also self-funded by selling advertisements to business owners and other organizations on the self-serve advertising platform. The Tulane Hullabaloo publishes its print edition once a month. It has received multiple Pacemaker Awards, the highest award in college journalism.
New Orleans is featured in a number of works of fiction. This article in an ongoing effort to list the books, movies, television shows, and comics that are set or filmed, in whole or part, in New Orleans.
The Pulitzer Prizes for 1981 are:
The 12th Ward or Twelfth Ward is a division of the city of New Orleans, Louisiana, one of the 17 Wards of New Orleans. The Ward was formerly part of the old Jefferson City annexed by New Orleans in 1870.
Charity Hospital was one of two teaching hospitals which were part of the Medical Center of Louisiana at New Orleans (MCLNO), the other being University Hospital. Three weeks after the events of Hurricane Katrina, then-Governor Kathleen Blanco said that Charity Hospital would not reopen as a functioning hospital. The Louisiana State University System, which owns the building, stated that it had no plans to reopen the hospital in its original location. It chose to incorporate Charity Hospital into the city's new medical center in the lower Mid-City neighborhood. The new hospital completed in August 2015 was named University Medical Center New Orleans.
John "Spud" McConnell is an American actor and television/radio personality based in New Orleans, Louisiana. He is married to actor/producer Maureen Brennan.
St. Mary's Dominican College was a liberal arts college for women in New Orleans, in the U.S. state of Louisiana.
Dr. Nut was a soft drink produced by New Orleans-based World Bottling Company. It was introduced in the 1930s and was produced until the late 1970s. Dr. Nut had a distinct almond flavor, similar to Amaretto liquor, and bottles were characterized by their plain logo depicting a squirrel nibbling on a large nut. In the 1940s it was marketed at a competitive price, was known for its slogans, and for having a man in a running costume who ran with the Mardi Gras parades.
Faubourg Brewing Company is a brewery founded in New Orleans, Louisiana on October 31, 1907 and originally named Dixie Brewing Company. The brewing operation was located on Tulane Avenue until 2005 when it closed due to damage from Hurricane Katrina. After that the beer was contract brewed out of state until November 2019 when a new brewery opened in New Orleans. In 2021 the brewery was renamed the Faubourg Brewing Company.
Hyatt Centric French Quarter New Orleans is a hotel on Canal Street in New Orleans, Louisiana. A downtown landmark, the building was constructed in 1849 and served as a highly successful department store for more than a century. The structure was redeveloped as a boutique hotel, opening in 1995. It features suites named for writers Tennessee Williams and John Kennedy Toole, as well for jazz musician Louis Armstrong – all of whose work is associated with the city and the Quarter.
D. H. Holmes was a New Orleans department store and later a New Orleans-based chain of department stores. The company was founded in 1842 by Daniel Henry Holmes, after whom it is named. In 1849 he moved his headquarters to Canal Street, where he developed his first department store. He followed the model of pioneering department stores in Paris and New York City to offer his customers the best products and services.
New Orleans Review, founded in 1968, is a journal of contemporary literature and culture that publishes "poetry, fiction, nonfiction, art, photography, film and book reviews" by established and emerging writers and artists. New Orleans Review is a publication of the Department of English at Loyola University New Orleans. Lindsay Sproul is the current editor-in-chief.
William Kenneth Holditch was a Professor Emeritus of English at the University of New Orleans. He was one of the pre-eminent scholars of the American playwright Tennessee Williams. Notably, he co-founded the Tennessee Williams Literary Festivals in New Orleans; Columbus, Mississippi; and Clarksdale, Mississippi, and he served on the advisory board of the festival in Provincetown, Rhode Island. His published works include Tennessee Williams and the South and The World of Tennessee Williams with Richard Freeman Leavitt as well as co-editor with Mel Gussow for the Library of America's Tennessee Williams Plays 1937-1955.
↑ Patteson, Richard F (1982), "Ignatius Goes to the Movies: The Films in Toole's 'A Confederacy of Dunces'", NMAL: Notes on Modern American Literature, 6 (2), item 14.
↑ Allman, Kevin. "John Waters". Gambit New Orleans News and Entertainment. Best of New Orleans. Archived from the original(interview) on 2010-06-12. Retrieved 2011-08-01.
↑ Brodesser-Akner, Claude (2012-05-22), "Exclusive: 'Dunces' Finds Its Ignatius in Galifianakis", Vulture, archived from the original on 2012-06-14, retrieved 2012-06-09.
Clark, William Bedford (1987), "All Toole's children: A reading of 'A Confederacy of Dunces'", Essays in Literature, 14: 269–80.
Dunne, Sara L (2005), "Moviegoing in the Modern Novel: Holden, Binx, Ignatius", Studies in Popular Culture, 28 (1): 37–47.
Kline, Michael (1999), "Narrating the Grotesque: The Rhetoric of Humor in John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces", Southern Quarterly, 37 (3–4): 283–91.
Leighton, H Vernon (2007–2012), John Kennedy Toole Research, Winona, three scholarly articles (including one free full text) and other materials.
Lowe, John (2008), "The Carnival Voices of 'A Confederacy of Dunces'", Louisiana Culture from the Colonial Era to Katrina, Baton Rouge, Louisiana: Louisiana State UP, pp.159–90.
McNeil, David (1984), "A Confederacy of Dunces as Reverse Satire: The American Subgenre", Mississippi Quarterly, 38: 33–47.
Palumbo, Carmine D (1995), "John Kennedy Toole and His Confederacy of Dunces", Louisiana Folklore Miscellany, 10: 59–77.
Patteson, Richard F; Sauret, Thomas (1983), "The Consolation of Illusion: John Kennedy Toole's 'A Confederacy of Dunces'", Texas Review, 4 (1–2): 77–87.
Pugh, Tison (2006), "'It's Prolly Fulla Dirty Stories': Masturbatory Allegory and Queer Medievalism in John Kennedy Toole's 'A Confederacy of Dunces'", Studies in Medievalism, 15: 77–100.
Rudnicki, Robert (2009), "Euphues and the Anatomy of Influence: John Lyly, Harold Bloom, James Olney, and the Construction of John Kennedy Toole's Ignatius", Mississippi Quarterly, 62 (1–2): 281–302.
Simmons, Jonathan (1989), "Ignatius Reilly and the Concept of the Grotesque in John Kennedy Toole's 'A Confederacy of Dunces'", Mississippi Quarterly, 43 (1): 33–43.
Simon, Richard K (1994), "John Kennedy Toole and Walker Percy: Fiction and Repetition in A Confederacy of Dunces", Texas Studies in Literature & Language, 36 (1): 99–116, JSTOR40755032 .
Zaenker, Karl A (1987), "Hrotsvit and the Moderns: Her Impact on John Kennedy Toole and Peter Hacks", in Wilson, Katharina M (ed.), Hrotsvit of Gandersheim: Rara Avis in Saxonia?, Ann Arbor, Michigan: Marc, pp.275–85.
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