A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole

A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole

When Walker Percy penned these prophetic words in his foreword to the first edition of A Confederacy of Dunces, he could not have known just how wide Toole's world of readers would become. Released by Louisiana State University Press in April 1980, A Confederacy of Dunces is nothing short of a publishing phenomenon. Turned down by countless publishers and submitted by the author's mother years after his suicide, the book won the 1981 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Today, there are over 1,500,000 copies in print worldwide in eighteen languages.

Toole's lunatic and sage novel introduces one of the most memorable characters in American literature, Ignatius Reilly, whom Percy dubs slob extraordinary, a mad Oliver Hardy, a fat Don Quixote, a perverse Thomas Aquinas rolled into one -- who is in violent revolt against the entire modern age. Ignatius' ire explodes when his mother backs her car into another automobile. The owner of the damaged vehicle insists on payment; Mrs. Reilly demands that her son cease watching television and writing in his Big Chief tablet and get a job.

Set in New Orleans, A Confederacy of Dunces outswifts Swift, one of whose essays gives the book its title. As its characters burst into life, they leave the region and literature forever changed by their presences -- Ignatius and his mother; Miss Trixie, the octogenarian assistant accountant at Levy Pants; inept, wan Patrolman Mancuso; Darlene, the Bourbon Street stripper with a penchant for poultry; Jones, the jivecat in space-age dark glasses. Satire and farce animate A Confederacy of Dunces; tragic awareness ennobles it.

Louisiana State University Press celebrates A Confederacy of Dunces' twentieth year withthis anniversary edition, which includes a new introduction by Andrei Codrescu that examines the relationship of this modern-day classic to the city whose pulse it so brilliantly captures.

Claiming to be the illegitimate son of John Kennedy Toole and a Micmac, John Kennedy Toole Jr. resides in a cave somewhere in the backwoods of Maine, living off the grid while writing parodies on an Olivetti typewriter that he purchased at a Goodwill store. When he is not writing, hunting, or fishing, he explores the Aleutians, the Antipodes, and Micronesia in his baidarka. In his free time he sells public infrastructure to unsuspecting rubes, his key offerings being the Brooklyn Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780802130204
ISBN 10	0802130208
Title	A Confederacy of Dunces
Author	John Kennedy Toole
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press
Year published	1994-01-21
Number of pages	416
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable