A Confederacy of Dunces

When a true genius appears in the world you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in a confederacy against him.

Jonathan Swift - Thoughts on various subjects, moral and diverting

And so lies the premise of this book. The central character, Ignatius J. Reilly, is an obese socially inept and out of work college graduate who specialised in medieval history and despises everything of the modern world. He truly believes in his genius and derives great pleasure from raging against the immorality of the modern world. Others view him as socially inept and just one foot from insanity. In this story he lumbers his obese body from situation to situation coming across a range of characters who, like him, fall short of social acceptance - the policeman who is despised by his precinct, the octogenarian accounts assistant of a failing men's pants manufacturer, the exotic dancer who reads 'Life' magazine to improve herself, his own suffering mother and Mr Robichaux who is always on the look out for 'Communiss' to name just a few.

LJ chose this book after seeing it on the First Tuesday Bookclub on ABC1. In a first for our bookclub LJ brought along the vidcast of the show when the book was discussed by Jennifer Byrne, Augusten Burroughs, Germaine Greer, Jason Steger and Marieke Hardy. This was a great way to start off our discussion, especially as the panellists were very divided on the book.

A Confederacy of Dunces was written by John Kennedy Toole and published in 1980, 11 years after the author's suicide. It won the Pulitzer Prize in 1981 and is now regarded as a literary classic. Set in the French Quarter of New Orleans it is regarded as having one of the best depictions of that city's particular dialect - largely reflected in the language of Burma Jones, the black worker at The Night of Joy bar and strip joint.

The book, however, is difficult to read. The three of us who finished reading the book all agreed it was a slog and perhaps the low attendance figures at bookclub also reflected this. Despite this the book resulted in lively discussion about the characters, the themes, the (lack of) plot.

On the basis of pure reading enjoyment we each gave the book a low score but discussed how we were glad to have read it. The book contains extraordinary characters, a lot of rage and extreme complexity but it is also rambling and would have benefited from a good edit. The character of Ignatius J. Reilly is repugnant and while we agreed that one doesn't have to like a character to enjoy a book we also felt that the extremity of his repugnance never abated and made for a difficult relationship between reader and book.

Our scores were low: 5/10, 6/10 and 6/10 however we recommend that if you are the sort of reader who wants to understand the books that have become cult and mainstream classics then you should set aside the time to read A Confederacy of Dunces. But don't expect it to be easy.

Next month's book: The Pianist by Wladyslaw Szpilman