John Kennedy Toole (1937–1969)

Strange, brilliant, insane and demented, insightful, hilarious, unsettling - all of these adjectives describe John Kennedy Toole's Pulitzer-winning A Confederacy of Dunces. Like being drunk at an amusement park, this book kept me off-kilter, and took me on unexpected rides with unforeseen turns, hills, and valleys.

Ignatius J. Reilly is, without question, the oddest character I've ever met in fiction in the 55+ years that I've been reading. He's obese, hypochondrical, narcissistic, barbaric, and probably a genius. I never grew to like him as his self-interest was unceasing. The rest of the cast of characters are probably drawn from true life combined with feverish imagination - Reilly's harried mother; his octogenarian co-worker, Miss Trixie; an unsuccessful police officer. I've not been to New Orleans since I was a child, and don't remember much about it, but it certainly came to life on these pages. If it is actually representative of New Orleans, it's a city I'd like to visit and observe.

I suspect insanity behind the writing. I know little of John Kennedy Toole, except that he took his own life and never saw his book published, never won the accolades that this book attained, or saw how popular a piece of fiction it became. But I have diagnosed him post-mortem with bipolar disorder (which I share); it would be responsible for the highs of the marvellous burble and whimsy of this book, and the lows which led him to suicide.

I didn't love the book, but I did like it very much, and found it grimly amusing. I think I'd have liked it better if I didn't myself feel like a failure, and if I hadn't seen Ignatius J. Reilly's unsuccessful life as a mirror of my own.… (more)