Fourth meeting: Confederacy of Dunces

Picking up a 400 page Pulitzer prize winner to read for a book club is a bit daunting. First off, the mere heft of the book can scare a person off, and secondly the pressure to not only understand but like a book that has been touted world wide as a masterpiece is immense. I picked up Confederacy of Dunces with these fears in mind. What if I don't finish? (I did, by the way, an hour before the meeting) What if I don't get it? What if I don't like it and everyone else does? Of course after the book club meeting I realized that picking a book like this and leading an intelligible discussion about it is an even bigger feat. Luckily, my friend and fellow Psychology grad student Josh is braver (or better at faking) than I, and pulled off another fabulous meeting of Eat, Drink, and Be Literary.

Entering the meeting, I mostly had negative feelings about the book, but the lingering idea that I was missing something that made others think this book was worth a Pulitzer made me suspend final judgment. As it turns out, other members of the book club tended to agree. Though we could recognize literary merit that we haven't seen in our club otherwise, nobody was that excited about the book and overall we just felt ambivalent. The main character Ignatius Reilly was disgusting in every sense of the word and hardly a sympathetic protagonist; described as obese with a "damp" mustache and yellow eyes, Ignatius lacked all social graces and had severe delusions of grandeur. The story dragged on and on seemingly without any character development, and I felt that the point of this novel could have been better expressed in perhaps a twenty page short story. Each chapter seemed to be the same-- a huge ensemble of characters dealing with life in New Orleans in the 1960's. No characters take charge of their own lives but rather just let life happen to them. And, like Ignatius, the entire cast of characters was some what despicable. (Though, even I have to admit that some of these "dunces" managed to make me laugh out loud a time or two).

It wasn't until one of the last discussion topics of the meeting that a positive opinion of the work was restored. Early on in the meeting, someone commented on the fact that the story behind the author and getting the book published was better than the actual book-- John Kennedy Toole made several attempts to get his masterpiece published, but it was not until after he committed suicide that the book (with the help of his mother) that the book was discovered and of course subsequently won the most prestigious literary award around. At first this comment sort of rolled past me. I agreed the forward was easier and more pleasant to read, but I didn't give it much other thought. However, when Josh asked us if we had thought about the point of view of the author when reading the novel, I was stumped. Somehow I hadn't thought about the depressed but brilliant man writing the novel and what his worldview must have been like-- an unsuccessful author, he probably felt helpless and like he had no control. This was obvious in the representation of the characters. At the meeting, several people pondered which characters might have been somewhat autobiographical, and some speculated that perhaps all were in some way. Thinking about the novel from this point of view caused me to suddenly shift my opinion of the entire work. Suddenly the disgusting and tedious "adventures" of the dunces of New Orleans seemed incredibly symbolic of a tragic and wasted life.

Overall, I am very glad that I can add Confederacy of Dunces to the ever-growing list of book club books. I got so much more out of the novel through the meeting than I ever possibly could have reading the book on my own. And in all honesty, this might have turned into a "never-ender" if I didn't have the idea of insightful discussion and a tasty pot luck (New Orleans themed, by the way-- beignets, Cajun potatoes, and red beans with rice) to motivate me.