Book Review: A Confederacy of Dunces, by John Kennedy Toole · 6:22pm Jun 10th, 2013
I’m mad. Really fucking mad. Like, mad-to-the-point-where-I-just-want-to-punch-something-until-my-fist-breaks.
I’ve read things I haven’t really loved before but which are technically flawless (e.g. Ayn Rand’s We the Living), and I give them the praise that they’re due. I’ve read things that are overrated, but I can understand why people like them (e.g. Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird), so I don't rip on them too hard. I’ve read things that are bad but I like as a guilty pleasure (e.g. pretty much everything Dan Brown’s ever written, Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six). Hell, I’ve even read things that are bad because the writing is bad and the characters are bad, the execution falls flat in pretty much every regard, but they don’t offend me because, under it all, you can see someone really wanting to tell a story, this passionate thirst to really convince me that what he’s saying is important—such that, though I will pan the story for its execution, I do, believe it or not, carry a little bit of respect for the effort made (e.g. Kkat’s Fallout: Equestria).
John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces falls into none of these categories. This is not only the worst thing I’ve ever read in my entire life, but it offends me that the author would even think of publishing something like this.
The story takes place in 1960's New Orleans. And inconsequential stuff happens to some inconsequential people. There. You’ve now read A Confederacy of Dunces. I do not feel sorry for having spoiled it for you. By virtue of the fact that you’re a human being, you have the god-given right to have Dunces spoiled for you and to not be subjected to this abomination of literature.
The story is completely plotless. Things happen in it, but everything that happens is meaningless. Every action is unrelated to every other action, and the “story” progresses as if you’re not so much a reader watching the building up of a plot releasing with an explosive climax—it reads like an encyclopedia of a bunch of lowlives in New Orleans. “Here the lowlives do this; now, the lowlives do that; now the lowlives talk about things that require no effort on the part of the reader to comprehend; now the lowlives say something that has no intellectual merit whatsoever.” When I say that the story is “plotless,” I mean that in the same way that a real person’s life is plotless—he wakes up, goes to work, argues with his boss, comes home, argues with his mom, masturbates, and then goes to bed. I'm not joking. That's seriously the kind of events that John Kennedy Toole considers important enough to tell us.
That is not a story. That is not a plot. At best, at best, it’s the potential for a single episode of a poorly-made sitcom.
Maybe it would’ve been more tolerable had the characters actually been interesting people or funny. They’re neither of those things. They’re lowlives in the lowest sense of the word. They’re all stupid as hell. There’s not a single smart person in the story. Neither are there any good people. They’re all stupid, worthless people talking about stupid, worthless things. Every character is horrible, whiny, insipid, caricatured, annoying, and utterly repulsive. They talk about bowling, about their jobs, about drinks, have domestic disputes, talk about inanity, inanity, inanity, inanity—inanities! That's literally all the conversations in the entire book!
Jones is a particularly horrible character. He warrants his own paragraph. I experienced Dunces through an audiobook. I swear to god—if I hear “Heeey!” or “Wooaaah!” or “Oooh-weee!” again, I can’t be held responsible for the hate crimes that I will no doubt perpetrate on humanity.
What kept me from blowing my brains out through the whole thirteen and a half hour torture? A couple things. One, I thought this was some cleverly-disguised satire or social commentary, which would render itself all the more witty when I realized exactly what Toole was criticizing. There’s nothing. The story drags on from event to event, from inane comment to inane comment. A quarter of the book is a husband and wife arguing. A quarter of the book is a mom arguing with her thirty year-old son who lives with her. A quarter of the book is a black guy saying nothing more intellectually stimulating than “oooh-weee!” The last quarter of the book is the manager of a bar selling pornography, swearing at the black guy for not working hard enough, and swearing at the stripper for not being competent enough. Oh, and there’s this little bit about gay people. Yes, that’s literally all I can say about it. There's this part with gay people. Don't ask me why they're there; don't ask me what purpose they serve to the story. Because I honestly couldn't tell you, and I don't think there's a reason anyway.
There’s no intellectually stimulating commentary or satire. It’s just dumb, dumb, and dumb.
I'm sorry if my review isn't particularly intelligent. I should probably not be reviewing this directly after I've finished the book. I should let it simmer for a few days, let my opinion mature, but I need to make a note here. If ever, in the future, I think "Hey, perhaps Dunces wasn't so bad," I'll have this blog post to look back at and remind me of the vile and filth that I had subjected my ears to.
Sunk cost bias, you filthy, filthy whore. This is how it works: you start something and then realize you're not enjoying yourself. You then then think: "Oh, maybe it will get better," and then read a bit more. As time and time progresses, you finally realize that you're only hating it more as it progresses. Then, there comes a point where you can barely stand it, but then you go: "Oh, well I'm almost done. I might as well just finish it." And then you finish and then you hate yourself. That's sunk cost bias. And I hate it. I hate it.
One other thing kept me hesitant from putting down the book: sometimes, the narrator states a description in a very original and rather witty fashion—occasionally. Ignatius Reily, I must admit, has some very funny comments. It’s quite humorous to hear a fat guy clothed in lumberjack outfit, going around and screaming in a voice identical to Foghorn Leghorn, stuff like: “Do I believe such filth? What degenerate produced this abortion?!” or, when he goes to the movies: “They probably both have halitosis! She's no virgin—rape her!” Every time he says the word “abortion,” I do kill myself laughing, but only because the guy reading the book says it like Foghorn Leghorn.
Ignatius is nothing but a walking punch-line. And that’s fine. That’s a completely legitimate (and, I must admit, at times humorous) narrative device. And I did laugh, at times. But you do not base a full-length novel on characters that are just punchlines—especially if the punchlines are more often than not not funny. Ignatius is funny at times. But there is no amount of humor that can justify making a full-length novel concerning the occasional witty comment.
John Kennedy Toole committed suicide after two publishers rejected the manuscript of A Confederacy of Dunces. He got it published after his grieving mother pushed the manuscript into the face of another publisher, telling him that it was good. Either this publisher had a serious mental condition that makes him a danger to our very civilization or his publisher’s critical eye was mitigated by human sympathy for a grieving mother. I’m inclined to think it was the latter.
In conclusion, to this book, I can only say, in the manner of Ignatius Reilly: “Do I believe this literary abortion that has assaulted my very psyche?”
Alright, I'm feeling a bit better now.
Numerous attempts to adapt it to film have failed? Okay.
Hm, it got a Pulitzer Prize. Had you been expecting a great book judging from what people had told you of it?
You know, in some ways, something that's not quite that bad can be worse than one that is that bad. Case in point: you gave up on Fallout: Equestria after ten chapters. You listened through this entire thing, however, because, apparently, it wasn't quite bad enough to make you stop. It was only after you'd finished it that you realized it really wasn't worth all that time. Looking up about Dunces on Wikipedia reveals that the man who eventually published it apparently had the same experience, though he seemed to get to the wrong conclusion at the end, and thought it was actually good.
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I heard about it and was interested because the story surrounding its publication was the classic "misunderstood and underappreciated genius whom only time and society's better under standing of the world as civilization progressed could vindicate." And I can think of many examples in art, many instances where I will enjoy a piece of art, and have this wonderful feeling of: "How could people so long ago hate this?"
I didn't know about the Pulitzer. But I wasexpecting something new, fresh, original, something people at the time couldn't really stand because it broke the status quo or it was too witty and clever.
It was neither of those things.
You're on the Wikipedia article, I see? How apt that there's no "plot synopsis" section, as there is with most books. There's no plot. There's no point. I couldn't tell you what John Kennedy Toole wanted of me. Authors usually want something. They'll say: "Let me take you on a fantastical adventure through a world I built out, piece by piece, and let me show you all its intricacies!" or "Let me show you the real world from another point of view!" or "Let me make an argument!" And, as I've said, even if a book is bad in execution, if the author's desire to tell something compelling comes through, I respect it enough for that.
I still have no idea what John Kennedy Toole wanted from me. Not once does the writing feel like he's passionate about what he's writing.
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Law: The strength of the sunk-cost bias is in direct proportion to how far one is through something.
Ten chapters through Fallout: Equestria is only about ten to twelve percent through the whole thing, so when I realized it was bad, it was easier to break off. Moreover, I stopped before it was offensively bad, so I harbor no ill-feelings toward it. Plus, there was always the feeling that the author was really passionate about what she was saying, that she really, really wanted to tell a story. That's why I stuck with it as long as I did; there came a point where that was the only reason I was reading it.
And this is why Dunces is, no matter what, infinitely worse than anything I've read: because it offended me. It felt like the book deliberately was slapping me in the face.
I was about forty percent through Dunces when I realized it was bad. Not "oh my god, kill me this is so bad" but more like "this is a bad book." But, up until then, I was laughing at times, and once or twice I thought: "This is kind of cute. It's bad, but I only listen to this while I'm commuting, and there's enough funny lines to make me laugh occasionally, so I guess I'll just keep listening." It wasn't until I was ninety percent through the book when I realized it was offensively bad. I think it was the whole part with the gay people (that's literally all that I can say about those characters. They're gay. That's all John Kennedy Toole felt like describing them with). At ninety percent through the book with the end so close in sight, I need not tell you what an overwhelming sunk-cost bias coupled with my lack of ability to say I've wasted my time did.
I would describe Dunces as the movie The Room. From the beginning, one is fully aware that The Room is an exceptionally subpar movie. But there are some things in it that are funny enough to keep someone watching (in The Room, the humor was unintentional; in Dunces, it was intentional). But then there comes a point where The Room stops being "hilariously bad" and becomes just "bad" (I think it's about half an hour in).
With Dunces, there came a point where it stopped being "bad, but the occasional funny comment makes it bearable until the end," to "this is actually offensive to my intelligence and humanity as a whole." But, by the time I reached that point, I was almost done, and I couldn't fight sunk-cost.
Yes. I hated that book, for all the same reasons. Proud to say I didn't finish it, despite the Pulitzer.