Slogging through

A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole
Page Count: 99/338

Well I’m almost 1/3^rd of the way through Confederacy and I’m on the fence.

Figuratively, of course.

I want to like Confederacy, I really do. It’s well-written, it’s funny (yes, I’ll admit to laughing a few times!), the characters feel very real, etc. etc. There’s just one problem really: I dislike Ignatius J. Reilly.
A lot.

As a protagonist, Reilly is an extremely unlikable character. He’s lazy, a slob, a conspiracy theorist, a moocher, a horrible employee, a pessimist... I could go on but I’ll spare you the thesaurus that would result. Suffice to say that it is far too easy to dislike this man. And that makes it difficult to like the book.

There are, however, a number of other amusing and relatable characters, from Mrs. O’Reilly (Ignatius’ alcohol- and arthritis-ridden mother) to Jones (a down-on-his-luck man trying to hold a job) to Patrolman Mancuso (a not-so-talented police officer who’s forced to wear silly costumes by his boss). As a supporting cast these guys are carrying the book.

They’re also holding me back from punching Ignatius in the face, which would be an admirable feat, indeed.

In a few reviews I’ve read online, readers also elaborated upon their own hatred of Ignatius, though most wrote that by the end of the novel they commiserated with him and had grown to like him. So far I’m not seeing how that is remotely possible!

Looking at the date, however, I’m going to have to hurry to finish the rest of this! I guess I know what I'll be doing this afternoon...

On the Other Side of the Irish Sea

Challenge #1: Read a book that has been on your to-read list for an eternity and a half

At Swim, Two Boys, Jamie O’Neill
Page Count: 0/562

I was either sixteen or seventeen when I signed up for a Barnes & Noble member card.  Flushed with cash from my very lucrative part-time job at Cold Stone Creamery and now endowed with a driver’s license, which meant that I could take myself to the bookstore without having to rely on the generosity of friends and family, I looked forward to taking full advantage of the 10% discount that B&N membership promised.  And exploit it I did: my personal library never expanded so much as it did in the following year, and one of the books I ended up picking up on a recommendation from someone since forgotten was Jamie O’Neill’s At Swim, Two Boys.

For a country with a history that is often modified by words like impoverished and downtrodden – or perhaps because of this history – Ireland has nevertheless produced a great number of writers.  At Swim, Two Boys is very much an Irish Novel.  Set in the year before the Easter Uprising in 1916, it tells the story of two young men who become friends…and perhaps somewhat more than that as well.  O’Neill apparently laboured over the manuscript for a full decade, and his magnum opus was released to great critical acclaim, with the author drawing comparisons to none other than James Joyce.

I’m not sure how how I haven’t gotten around to reading this yet, since the book has been in my possession for a long time now, but the truth is that I’ve never read any Irish literature before, plays by Oscar Wilde notwithstanding (and, honestly, Wilde’s witticisms are so ubiquitous that his work hardly feels attached to any national literary tradition at all).  How I have gotten away with this, I am not sure.  If there is any group of Europeans with whom otherwise nationalistic Americans feel a historical, cultural, and alcoholic affinity, it is the Irish.  You would think that, at some point in my life, somebody would have hounded me to at least read Angela’s Ashes? 

As I ready myself to pick up At Swim, Two Boys at last, I wonder if my disregarding it all of these years has been a by-product of my Angophilia, from which literature is not excluded.  When I think of English novels, my mind goes to genteel/sardonic social commentary, aristocratic families & great estates, Gothic mysteries, and a certain style of writing that is at once deliberate and understated.  One gets the impression that Irish writers – no doubt courtesy of Britain’s involvement in their country – have always had much larger issues with which to grapple.  To quote the poet Richard Wilbur, “It is always a matter, my darling / Of life and death, as I had forgotten.”

When a true genius appears...

Read a book that has been on your to-read list for an eternity and a half

A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole
Page Count: 0/338

My father's copy of Confederacy, a fifth printing from 1980.

     I chose the first book that came to mind when I read this challenge. And I’m somewhat ashamed to admit that I’ve never read this one. A Confederacy of Dunces is, after all, probably the most famous book set in my hometown of New Orleans. We even have a bronze statue of the main character on a main drag downtown! So it seems only appropriate to start this blogging adventure off with such a classic.
     From some sneaky Wikipedia sleuthing, I discovered that Confederacy was actually published 11 years after it was written, and thus after John Kennedy Toole’s suicide at the age of 31. Toole had tried to publish the book before but multiple editors rejected it. After his death, his mother badgered author Walker Percy until eventually Percy published the novel. Smart choice too - Toole ended up winning the Pulitzer for fiction posthumously in 1981 and Confederacy became a major hit.
     The novel tells the story of a 30-something man - Ignatius J. Reilly - who is unemployed, still lives with his mother and is an all-around slob. After a series of rather unfortunate events he is forced to search for a job, and thus his adventure through the seedy underworld of New Orleans – and specifically the French Quarter (ha!) – begins.
     Confederacy is supposed to be an extremely humorous novel, which makes this even more of a challenge for me. I don’t usually find books funny per se. Sad? Yes. Enlightening? Sure. Uplifting? Why not? But laugh-out-loud funny? Not often. That just means I’m looking forward to really getting into this book. Hopefully my new neighbors will be hearing some giggling soon.

Challenge #1: January 2012

Our Challenge for the first month of 2012 is as follows:

Read a book that has been on your to-read list for an eternity and a half.

We mentioned in our first post that the order of our Challenges was determined randomly.  This wasn’t the full truth: Katherine and I both agreed that it only made sense for a blog like this to begin with an earnest attempt to tackle a book that we’ve been meaning to pick up for ages but simply, for any variety of reasons (e.g., lack of time, general laziness, or the ever favourite habit of procrastination), haven’t got around to yet.  Well, all of that changes this month – really, it will!

Stick around for our posts introducing the books that we’ve each selected to read for this Challenge, which ought to be going up within the next day or so.

Welcome to “The Perfume of Paper”!

Introduction

"I stepped into the bookshop and breathed in that perfume of paper and magic that strangely no one had ever thought of bottling." -- Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Angel's Game

The idea for this blog came about after a discussion between the contributors about how little time and motivation that we, as two twentysomething urbanites, have for reading for pleasure.  It was not the first time we had touched on this topic and, were something not done about it, it would not be the last.  It was also, of course, born of a shared love for books, not the least evidenced by the reams of e-mails and text messages that have passed between us regarding them.

And thus the Challenges were born.  By holding each other to completing a Challenge each month (and writing about it), the two of us will be forced to find the time to read more often, as well as to pick up books we otherwise might not. We have a brainstormed list of Challenges in a shared Google doc and used a random integer generator to pick a year’s worth. Suggestions for Challenges are more than welcome, though we can’t guarantee they’ll be taken.

The Rules

...are simple.

1. Read a book that fits into each month’s Challenge within the time frame of that month.
2. Said book cannot be one that you have previously read (though ones read by the other contributor are still fair game).
3. A minimum of three (3) posts must be written and published here: one (1) when you begin the Challenge, one (1) during the Challenge, and one (1) when the Challenge is complete. You are, of course, encouraged to write more.

The Participants

Malin’s life as a bibliophile got an early start: she was That Toddler who used to shout out the names of letters printed on the sides of buildings, or at least that what her father tells her, and, when she was eight, she would save up quarters earned from household chores to buy the latest volume of the Adventures of Wishbone series. She’s come a long way since -- for one thing, books cost a lot more than $3.99 these days -- but one thing has remained constant: the belief that reading is as essential to life as food, water, and air.

She has a deep fondness for hoity-toity literary novels, historical fiction, and anything with even a touch of Gothic sensibility. Every now and then, Malin will feel guilty about all of the classics she hasn’t read and pretend to be an English major for a time. Her favourite authors include David Foster Wallace, William Faulkner, and Tony Judt; this would suggest that her ideal novel concerns a grandiloquent, degenerate family from the American South mingling with a passel of French Socialists meditating on the politicised nature of historical memory, interspersed with two hundred pages’ worth of footnotes. Or something like that.

Katherine was one of those kids who got books as presents and rewards while growing up. While she certainly didn’t always appreciate that quirk of her parents (particularly when a new American Girls product was released) to this day she rewards herself with a good book. Try it sometime - it’s better than chocolate. As cheesy as it sounds, she believes there’s no feeling quite like cracking open the spine of a book for the first (or second, or third) time.

While these days the books she reads tend to revolve around salacious real-life art theft and forgeries, Katherine still enjoys good works of fiction, historical novels and the occasional ridiculous murder mystery. Under duress, she’d call Carlos Ruiz Zafón’s The Shadow of the Wind her favorite novel, but only because you forced her to choose just one. And whatever you do, don’t suggest she read East of Eden. It is the one and only book she’s started but never finished and that’s all she has to say on the matter.