Laura Reviews A Confederacy of Dunces

Yes, my friends, A Confederacy of Dunces is one of my favorite books.

I was hanging out with my brother in the mall, walking out of some inevitably shitty store, when he told me that I should really pick up ACOD. We have similar tastes, so I figured I'd go out and buy it instead of borrowing it from our town's shitty library.

I think I read it in two days.

Granted, I was at a crappy school back then that didn't give me any work to do in the Spring Quarter, so I'd go home and have hours without homework to kill, and then get up in the morning, and manage to kill six hours of school somehow.

But even if I were taking AP classes back then, I'd still zip through the book.

Because ACOD is one of the greatest books ever written. Here's wiki's summary of the book:

Ignatius is something of a modern Don Quixote — eccentric and creative, sometimes to the point of delusion.

The story is set in the city of New Orleans in the early 1960s. The central character is Ignatius J. (Jacques) Reilly, an intelligent but slothful man still living with his mother at age 30 in Uptown New Orleans, who, because of family circumstances, must set out to get a job. In his quest for employment he has various adventures with colorful French Quarter characters.
He disdains modernity, particularly pop culture. The disdain becomes his obsession: he goes to movies in order to mock their inanity and express his outrage with the contemporary world's lack of "theology and geometry." He prefers the scholastic philosophy of the Middle Ages, especially that of Boethius. However he is also seen as enjoying many modern comforts and conveniences, and is given to claiming that the rednecks of rural Louisiana hate all modern technology which they associate with progress.



One day I was called down to the guidance office to talk about what classes I wanted to take next year. I had to explain to my guidance counselor (who I had never seen before in my life) that I wasn't going to be coming back next year. Part of me wanted to tell her that I was pregnant and going to get married to the manager of a local Burger King who wanted to travel out west to seek fortune in Las Vegas. But I ended up telling her the truth, that I just couldn't stand the school and needed to go back home.

Surprisingly, she was really cool about it. Before I left, she said,
"I see you're reading A Confederacy of Dunces."
"Yeah! It's a really good book."
"My mother was friends with the author, you know."
"Really????"
"Yeah."
"What was he like?"
"Well," she smiled. "he was really something else. Very funny."

Then he killed himself, of course.

But still, isn't that awesome? I had just picked up the book like a day ago, and here I was, already two steps away from the author!!

A Confederacy of Dunces is funny, brilliant, and warped. It's an American classic. I'd love to see John Kennedy Toole take down Scott F. Fitzgerald in a fight. You should all go out and buy this book. The characters you meet are unbelieably odd, and the gay ppl are hillllarrrious.