The dunces are all in a confederacy against him

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

I must apologize again for the delay in (and relatively short length of) this post. I swear this is not an indication of how this blog will end up moving along. I finished A Confederacy of Dunces before the end of the month and unfortunately have been very busy at work and so haven't had time to post about it yet! And so without further ado, here are some of my final thoughts on Toole's famous novel:

My hatred of Ignatius Reilly never diminished. In fact, between the last time I posted about this book and now, my hatred increased. I found Reilly to be pretentious, psychotic, and a slob. His ramblings (internal, written, and spoken) were annoying and full of conspiracy theories and strange social commentary. I found myself actually wanting bad things to happen to him. And while he did find himself in quite a bit of trouble at various points in the plot, Reilly was never truly punished for the serious problems he called (I'm trying not to give away the ending!). This rubbed me the wrong way.

Despite my hatred for the protagonist I actually quite enjoyed Confederacy. It was easy to get caught up in Reilly's adventures around my hometown (and it's always nice to know the neighborhoods events take place in). I found Toole's dialogue and details to be extremely accurate, to the point where I imagine it would be difficult for out-of-towners to understand certain expressions and cultural idiosyncrasies.

I thoroughly enjoyed how every character was connected to the others - in a small city like New Orleans it still feels as though you know everyone and it was amusing to see that Reilly seemed to feel the same way back in the '60s. The man who was arrested for vagrancy by the police officer who featured in much of the novel worked at the Bourbon club where Mrs. Reilly got drunk enough to crash her car into a building which caused Ignatius to go out on his job search, which was the same club that was being investigated for illegal activity, etc, etc. These kinds of connections were a lot of fun to sort out.

And so, while Ignatius never ended up in the sanitarium in which he belonged, I quite liked Confederacy. It was entertaining, interesting, and most important of all, it made me laugh. Mission accomplished. Now it's on to some more serious reading... I've got a Dostoyevsky lined up for this month.