A Confederacy of Dunces is an American comic masterpiece. John Kennedy Toole's hero, one Ignatius J. Reilly, is a haughty, hungry human with an appetite for misadventure. Both fractious and fastidious – think Don Quixote in the French Quarter – Ignatius gets himself involved in a series of comic interludes that never result in a moral awakening of any description. With the ultimate irredeemable protagonist as a guide through New Orleans, Toole's Pulitzer-prizewinning story explodes with a cast of bizarre and original characters, dialogue to tickle the senses, and the brightest mind of his generation (in his own reckoning), Ignatius J. Reilly, medieval expert and utterly unemployable by any standard.
This is the second of two meetings discussing this book.
World Literature Book Groups
