Counter-Currents
3,543 words 
John Kennedy Toole
A Confederacy of Dunces
Foreword by Walker Percy
Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1980
A Confederacy of Dunces is one of the greatest comic novels ever written. It takes its name from a line of Swift’s which serves as its epigraph: “When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that all the dunces are in confederacy against him.”
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19 comments
Do you have any insight into how the manuscript changed in response to Gottlieb’s requested revisions, or what those requests may have been? I wonder if there was an attempt to bowdlerize the work and if so whether it succeeded to any degree…
When Thelma Toole submitted it to publishers, she used the original manuscript and refused to hear of any edits. Thus the book was published without revision.
A good woman! I’m relieved to hear it.
Not one of the funniest novels ever but the funniest novel ever! I stood up and applauded when I finished.
Great review Greg. I plan on rereading it soon.
Thanks. It really is a work of genius.
I read it at least twenty years ago on the recommendation of an older female marketing executive I was dating. I guess it was making the rounds in her circles. Although I was certainly race conscious at the time, it was well before I was completely red pilled. I thoroughly enjoyed the novel, especially its humor. And I noted with approval that there was no negro worship in its pages, quite the opposite. Any commentary on Jewishness went over my head, though. I may have to reread it looking for Toole’s insights on the JQ. Thanks for the great review, Greg, and the trip down memory lane.
Thanks. I really enjoyed writing this review. I have read Confederacy three times now, and I know I will dip into it again and again.
Thank you for bringing back a flood of pleasant memories! A Confederacy of Dunces is one of my perennial favorites. Nothing like reading from one of Ignatius’ Big Chief tablets…
I read the book many years ago and didn’t like it. I think Ignatius is rude, obnoxious, disgusting, and has no redeeming qualities except he uses big educated words to show how freaking wise he is compared to us ordinary slobs. I was reminded by something Jim Kunstler said in writing: don’t trash your hero. Make us like him, or at least sympathize in some way. I had no interest in Ignatius and thought him being so scholarly and his mother being a dimwit was also a bit incongruous. I’ll grant the setting is good and language has points, but Riley leaves me cold, and I wonder about all of you who get into this story. I do think the novel was typical of the 60’s, and I was surprised it didn’t get published, since there were a lot of books around like this. It was obvious when Ignatius’s jewish girl friend showed up there was going to be a part two.
Interestingly enough, my novel Guards was liked by my writing group, one man said it reminded him a lot of A Confederacy of Dunces.
Also, on Miles Mathis’s site, he claims the novel is written by a committee at Langley (CIA), as is a lot of fiction, and that Toole was an invented person.
It does sound odd that he wrote this book, then killed himself because it got rejected, and nothing is really known about him. Sort of like one book wonders like Grace Metallicus (Peyton Place) or Harper Lee (To Kill a Mockingbird).
The book just leaves me cold. It seems I’ll never really be a true CC type. Poor me.
There’s a mountain of biographical data on Toole, including two biographies, memoirs by friends, students, and teachers, correspondence and other papers, another novel.
What kind of idiot is Miles Mathis? What’s more likely? All those people are lying? Or Miles Mathis is a paranoid fantasist?
I don’t believe all that, but I do sort of agree with gotlieb’s comments on the book. The antisemitism is obviously imitation of Philip Roth, very imitative. The smut, the master-debation. The Roth story Defender of the Faith is a stab at Jewish nepotism, much like the passage I describe in CofD. To me that was the salient feature of the book, but all that seems to be lost on its myriad admirers. A Jew can say such things, but a non Jew? Maybe that’s why it didn’t get published. But the book does capture New Orleans really well, and, well, the people appear to like it!
ps. If you went up to the average reader of CofD and said,”do you think this book is a satire of Jewish ethnocentrism,” they would look at you stunned, then their mouth would hang open and their hands would start to shake visibly, then they would compose themselves and say something like, “no not at all, you must be a hater.”
“I … thought him being so scholarly and his mother being a dimwit was also a bit incongruous. ”
In the words of Curly Howard, I resemble that remark!
I read this book back in high school and don’t remember all of it. I’m not sure I agree it should have been published, but I did like some of the epistolatory sections, which I think must derive from Saul Bellow. The center piece of the novel is the letter from Minkoff in which she describes the folk singer from Israel that she is in love with who hates WASPs, but then she finds out he is really a baptist from Alabama and compares it to when she was feeding a squirrel in Poe Park and it was really a rat, which meant she decided whether she liked the singer solely based on his ethnic origin. A satire of extreme ethnocentrism. I think Poe Park refers to Pocket Park at Tulane, a student gathering spot, which is next to the student union. There is a heavy yankee/jewish presence at Tulane. In the surrounding environs it is known as “Jewlane,” lol.
I am from New Orleans, btw, but I went to Xavier, a historically black school, because I am able to pass as black, but I used to date a Jewish girl who went to Tulane, so I have a passing familiarity with its environs. The book is more interesting if you are from New Orleans. It captures it pretty well. Also does George Washington Cable, particularly in the story Posson Jones. I had a Cajun uncle, and I swear Jules, a creole, in the story is exactly like him, his speech peppered with “mais.”
So a question that I ponder is whether Toole was one of the “guys” the usual suspects were after? His paranoid behavior might suggest this. He thought he was being followed and supposedly searched his dwelling for listening devices. 30s is late for a psychotic break. His suicide is suggestive and that they were keeping his book out of publication, although im not a thousand percent it should have been. Evidence from the It: the Beatles song Paperback Writer could be about him. Eleanor Rigby. “Look at him working, writing the words of a sermon no one will hear.” lol! Also, Gottlieb said of his book “it’s not about anything.” Later Seinfeld is called a “show about nothing,” by way of saying it wasn’t really that.
Whoa, what?
I am from New Orleans, btw, but I went to Xavier, a historically black school, because I am able to pass as black
How can someone pass as black? ‘Passing’ is usually the other way around. Why would you go to a historically black school if not black? And did you actually tell students there that you were black – and did they buy it completely? Or did most know you weren’t? Did you imply to employers that you’re black (to benefit from affirmative action)? Lastly, what was it like at this school – the courses, the students, etc? Is this what made you sympathetic to prowhite activism and scholarship?
This sounds like it has the making of a great first person account of ‘passing’. Maybe you should write up your experiences and impressions.
BTW, I read a library copy of Confederacy in the 90s. I recall liking it very much at the time, but I don’t remember much of the plot (was there much?). Comic novels, imo, often are like that – enjoyable, but not memorable (except the memory of having chuckled). Try recounting the “plot” of Tristram Shandy.
I look forward to reading this post after it has escaped the paywall.
I’m half black, but neither parent is fully black.
I’ve not yet taken time to read this book, but after reading this excellent review, I must. What a story!
I am not (yet) behind the paywall, so I was unable to read the post, but the mere title brought a smile to my face. I read A Confederacy of Dunces more than forty years ago and still remember the spectacular cast of characters. That is what a great writer of fiction does, he writes the unforgettable. Mark Twain did that, which is why everybody remembers the characters in Tom Sawyer, no matter how many decades have passed since they read it.
Time to put your money where your mouth is.
That book lives up to the hype. It really is that good.
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