A Confederacy of Dunces

A Confederacy of Dunces is a novel by the American writer John Kennedy Toole who appeared in 1980, 11 years after the author committed suicide. By Toole's motherThelma efforts and writer Walker Percy (who wrote the preface) was still editing the book. It obtained cult status soon and is now an important part of the "canon" of southern American literature. Toole posthumouslyin 1981 won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

The title is derived from a line of Jonathan Swift (from 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.

The story is set in New Orleans in the early 1960s. The main character, Ignatius j. (Jacques) Reilly, is an intelligent but lazy man who still lives with his mother on his thirtieth in a residential area of the city, and is forced by family circumstances to find a job. In his search for work he meets a variety of colorful characters from New Orleans ' "French Quarter". Toole wrote the novel in 1963, during his last months in Puerto Rico.



Content
[hide] *1 main characters  ==Main Characters[ Edit] == ===Ignatius J. Reilly[ Edit] === Ignatius Jacques Reilly is a kind of modern Don Quixote-eccentric, idealistic and a little crazy. In his preface: Walker Percy describes him as "a slob, a mad Oliver Hardy, a fat Don Quixote, a perverse Thomas Aquino airport in one man." He hates modernity, particularly pop culture and that nausea is his obsession: he goes to the film to make jokes about and to express his anger about the lack of "theology and geometry" in the contemporary world. He misses the Scholasticism of the middle ages, Boethiusin particular. [1]  on the other hand, he enjoys the comfort and conveniences of the modern world and lashes out at the Rednecksof the countryside, who hate all modern technology and associate with progress . That Ignatius is a broad imagination is clear by the fact that he insinuates that a prophetic role to his stomach Porter, an organ that food are relaying to the intestines. He identifies with Cassandra, a Greek mythological figure who got a predictive view of Apollo, in Exchange for a night together. Snakes licked her ears clean so they could hear the future, but when she refused to sleep with Apollo, he laid a curse on her so that no one would believe her future forecasts. [2]
 * 1.1 Ignatius j. Reilly
 * 1.2 Myrna Minkoff
 * 1.3 Irene Reilly
 * Ignatius in the cinema 2
 * 3 The structure of the book
 * 4 the difficult path to publication
 * 5 Nuts

Ignatius does not believe that he is part of this world. Are social failures are the work of higher powers. He thinks Fortuna, Goddess of chance bad for him on the wheel of Fortunehas turned. Ignatius loves to eat and his (sexual) fantasies sometimes go crazy he makes ridiculous to Obscene images on sides. his senses to protect against their stimulating effect. Although he sees himself as someone with a wide world view, he sees it not be to leave his birthplace and bored he friends and strangers with whom he picks about converse a failed trip to Baton Rouge with a Greyhoundbus, a (for him) traumatic experience, ' extreme horror '. ===Myrna Minkoff[ Edit<span class="mw-editsection-bracket" len="1" style="color:rgb(85,85,85);">] === <p style="margin-top:0.5em;line-height:22.3999996185303px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;">Myrna Minkoff, by Ignatius as "that Minx" appointed, is a Jewish beatnik from New York that Ignatius met when she was at University in New Orleans. Although their political, social, religious and personal views are completely opposite both have a fascination with each other. In the book refers to their joint attacks on the subject matter of their teachers in college. In most of the novel she comes for in the frequent correspondence the two maintained since she has returned to New York, a correspondence full of sexual analysis of her and her disgust for his sacrilegious behavior. Official regret they both each other's behavior, but-although neither that admits-actually they are constantly trying to impress each other. ===Irene Reilly<span class="mw-editsection" len="347" style="-webkit-user-select:none;font-size:small;margin-left:1em;line-height:1em;display:inline-block;white-space:nowrap;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket" len="1" style="color:rgb(85,85,85);">[ Edit<span class="mw-editsection-bracket" len="1" style="color:rgb(85,85,85);">] === <p style="margin-top:0.5em;line-height:22.3999996185303px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;">Mrs. Irene Reilly is Ignatius ' mother (21 years widow). Initially she gives Ignatius space and rides him where that but want to go, but as the book progresses she learns to stand up for themselves. She drinks something too happy to Muscatel wine, something Ignatius exaggerates to the proportion of "heavy alcoholic '.

<p style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:22.3999996185303px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;">She falls in love with Claude Robichaux, a wealthy man. At the end of the book she decides to marry him after they Ignatius in a founded stops. ==Ignatius in the cinema<span class="mw-editsection" len="358" style="-webkit-user-select:none;font-size:small;margin-left:1em;line-height:1em;display:inline-block;white-space:nowrap;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;font-family:sans-serif;"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket" len="1" style="color:rgb(85,85,85);">[ Edit<span class="mw-editsection-bracket" len="1" style="color:rgb(85,85,85);">] == <p style="margin-top:0.5em;line-height:22.3999996185303px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;">Toole describes how Ignatius to the film is on comic. Although he does not mention the names they can be recognized as Billy rose's Jumbo and That touch of Mink Doris Day movies, both from 1962. <sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-NMAL_3-0" len="180" style="line-height:1;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[3]  In another passage refuses Ignatius a "feed praised Swedish drama to start looking, about a man who loses his soul." This is most likely Ingmar Bergman's Winter Light, also released in 1962. Further on in the book was conceived the night Mrs Reilly remembers which Ignatius: after she and her husband had seen Red Dust, released in October 1932. This would mean that Ignatius was born around July 1933; as he plays in the book the book is 30 years old are probably wondering in 1963. ==The structure of the book<span class="mw-editsection" len="357" style="-webkit-user-select:none;font-size:small;margin-left:1em;line-height:1em;display:inline-block;white-space:nowrap;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;font-family:sans-serif;"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket" len="1" style="color:rgb(85,85,85);">[ Edit<span class="mw-editsection-bracket" len="1" style="color:rgb(85,85,85);">] == <p style="margin-top:0.5em;line-height:22.3999996185303px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;">The structure of a conspiracy of Idiots corresponds to Ignatius ' favorite book, Boethius ' consolation of philosophy. The book has chapters and subchapters. Important parts are ' outside ' the story posted. In "Comfort" switch narrative pieces off with metric verse. In "conspiracy" is also the narrative style and poetic pieces of Ignatius ' diary and letters between him and Myrna processed. Many of the storytelling and the plot has Toole directly from copied consolation of philosophy .

<p style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:22.3999996185303px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;">Toole's certain aspects of the book reflect experiences in real life. For example the two jobs that Ignatius has: hot-dog vendor and employee in a trouser factory. Toole worked after graduating from Tulane in a factory where trousers were manufactured. His free days he was often in New Orleans's "French Quarter", where he helped a friend with a eetkraampje. After graduating with his "overprotective" mother Toole also lived. Otherwise the author was the opposite of Ignatius, so loved Toole of travel and was known as neat and ' well dressed '. ==The difficult path to publication<span class="mw-editsection" len="368" style="-webkit-user-select:none;font-size:small;margin-left:1em;line-height:1em;display:inline-block;white-space:nowrap;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;font-family:sans-serif;"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket" len="1" style="color:rgb(85,85,85);">[ Edit<span class="mw-editsection-bracket" len="1" style="color:rgb(85,85,85);">] == <p style="margin-top:0.5em;line-height:22.3999996185303px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;">The book was never published as described above if no copy from Toole's House Toole's mother had taken in 1969, after his suicide (age 31). Thelma Toole was persevering and is-despite many rejections-continue along publishing houses go. She called repeatedly on Walker Percy, an author and lecturer on the Loyola University of New Orleans, claiming that he had to read the script. Initially he refused, as also in the preface States: "... She was persistent, and on one day and she was in my Office with the thick manuscript. There was no escape; the only hope for me was that I would find the bad after a few pages, to which I could stop reading it. Usually is it unfair I do too, the first paragraph is mostly. My only fear was that this was not bad enough, or maybe just good enough so that I should read ...In this case, I was reading through.And by. First with the feeling that it is not bad enough to stop, then with a glimmer of curiosity, when a growing enthusiasm and ultimately disbelief: I didn't like the zoó for possible that could be good. "<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-4" len="175" style="line-height:1;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;"> [4]

<p style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:22.3999996185303px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;">The book was eventually published by the Louisiana State University Press in 1980. It won the Pulitzer Prize in 1981.

<p style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:22.3999996185303px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;">Although Tulane University in New Orleans has a collection of Toole's papers, and there is some early writings are found, is the location of the original manuscript unknown.