A confederacy of dunces

John Kennedy Toole
A critical paper by
Thomas Slavin

My edition of the book, that is the subject of tonight’s critical paper, was printed in the year 2000. By then over 1.5 million copies had been sold – reflecting worldwide distribution, and translation, into 18 languages. Tonight’s book was selected in 1981, by the Pulitzer Committee, as the year’s best novel. For those book collectors in attendance, the current “average” price of a copy of the LSU Press first edition (1980) is over $1,500. In my copy, both the eminent author – Walker Percy, and the Romanian humorist Andrei Codrescu opined as to the book’s merits. A Confederacy of Dunces would have never seen the light of day had it not been for the author’s mother – Thelma. It took Thelma eleven years, following the 1969 suicide of her son, to find a publisher for the dog-eared manuscript that she trotted about. Somehow she made contact with Walker Percy. Percy from my recollection, having read a couple of his books, writes on subjects that typically have a theological or philosophical theme – and not humor – yet he spoke glowing of Confederacy.  It’s my contention, that while one’s initial impression is that the book is simply humorous, there are underlying, and critically important elements that are social, religious and philosophical in character. To most readers, the book’s humor is its underlying merit, but  I contend that while the humor is there, it is draped on a philosophical skeleton whose origin is the Early Middle Ages, augmented by satirical treatment of contemporary social issues.

First, allow me to flesh out the derivation of the title. An epigraph is a quotation, found at the beginning of a literary work that sets forth the theme of the book. The title, A Confederacy of Dunces derives from an epigraph penned by Jonathan Swift in his book: Thoughts on Various Subjects, Moral and Diverting, to wit: “When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.” How could we better describe our protagonist – Ignatius Jacques Reilly?

Place and time are critical in formulating a novelistic undertaking. 1) Place.  First – the books setting is in the working class Ninth Ward of New Orleans, in the R.C. Parish of St. Ode of Cluny (referred to in the book as St. Odo of Cluny.” 2) Time. The time frame associated with the book is thought to be “early sixties,” but in the course of my research, Confederacy wonks have concluded that it is possible to exactly date the novel by the release  of a movie that featured Ignatius’s favorite actress (Doris Day.) Remember, Ignatius when disrupting everyone in the first run movie theatre, accurately referred to as the Prytania,  states the movie is about a woman and her libertine boss – who wishes to seduce her. The movie he described is “That Touch of Mink,” and it starred the named actress and Cary Grant. It was first released in New Orleans on June 14th, 1962, thereby pinpointing the time frame of the novel.

Now, let’s get a snapshot impression of the novel’s protagonist… go back to the book’s forward, written by Walker Percy.  He said Reilly was a “slob extraordinary, a mad Oliver Hardy, a fat Don Quixote, and a perverse Thomas Aquinas rolled into one,” and I believe that sums it up.  Ignatius, in the novel, was 31 years old; still living at home; and was both waited-on and over-indulged by his mother – Irene. He was a disdainer of pop culture and embracer of the scholastic philosophy of the Early Middle Ages, in particular the theological and mathematical views of Severinus Boethius. Standing back, we have to conclude that the true beauty of the book comes from the self-delusional reality that Ignatius lives in. He is - without trying - the personification of dysfunctionality.   

Let’s segue into short descriptions of the book’s other principal characters:

1. Irene Reilly, the afore-mentioned mother, precipitates thru an auto accident, a series of mad-cap adventures that give the book its momentum. Irene was fond of cheap wine (which she stored in her oven) so she uses wine as her opiate. During the course of the book, she develops a friendship with an elderly match-maker woman named Santa Battaglia. Santa introduces Irene to a man, who later becomes her beau.
2. Myrna Minkoff, a New Yorker that Ignatius met in college, stands for everything that Ignatius opposes, and vice versa. Their frequent correspondence fueled much of the behavioral over-reaction manifested by Ignatius. Her rescue of Ignatius, at the book’s conclusion, suggests that they’ll be sharing a life together.
3. Santa Battaglia is the Aunt of a woefully inept police officer named Angelo Mancuso. A lover of bowling, family values, and a good time – Santa precipitates a change in Irene’s view of the behavior of Ignatius. 
4. Officer Angelo Mancuso, the nephew of Santa, is the recipient of the sustained ire of his station commander. False arrests by Mancuso, procedural mistake followed by mistake, endear this stumble bun cop to readers.
5. Claude Robichaux, pensioner, home owner, and a staunch supporter of his country. Claude is smitten by Irene and they ultimately become engaged.
6. Darlene is the “Night of Joy’s” resident B girl, who aspires to be an exotic dancer. Darlene’s ineptitude is as humorous as one can imagine.
7. Lanna Lee, the owner of Night of Joy, is the person characterized by Burma Jones  as a Nazi – given her dictatorial manner. Lanna and her accomplice “George” operate a porn distribution ring within the New Orleans’s public school system.
8. Burma Jones is the sunglass bedecked janitor at the Night of Joy… and in part a narrator of portions of the novel. His principal focus is on intrigues of Lanna. His goal is to bring down the despotic Lanna Lee who treats him like an indentured servant. If there’s ever a character that’s a literary side-splitter it’s Jones…who keeps the reader laughing from beginning to end.
9. Mr. Clyde is the surly owner of Paradise Vendors. He is the source for Reilly’s love affair with those 12 inch hot dogs from “paradise.”
10. Gus and Mrs. Levy are respectively the owner of Levy Pants and his spouse – an amateur psychoanalyst.
11. Mr. Gonzalez is the loyal and dedicated office manager at Levy Pants, and Ignatius’s supervisor while he was employed there.
12. Dementia afflicted Miss Trixie is the 80+ year old book-keeper and clerk at Levy Pants whose desires include: retiring, getting a ham from her employer, and being left in peace – so she can sleep on the job.
13. Dorian Greene is the French Quarter homosexual who invites Ignatius to address his party smitten friends in order that they organize into a sodomite legion and  infiltrate the US Army.
14. Tenants of Greene include three riotous lesbians known by their family names as Club,  Bumber, and Steele. They are the causality of the fracas at the Night of Joy.
15. There are numerous other minor characters, but for the sake of brevity, let’s move on.

 It’s not my intent to summarize the plot. In reality, I can’t because there’s no way that I can replicate the humor, craziness, and witty dialogue that Toole fashioned. Each of the characters I summarized in “cameo,” manifested  “over-the-top” behavior. Since the mad cap foolery of Toole’s writing can’t be matched, I’m going to focus on a few matters that may have escaped your attention, and to that brew I’ll mix in some of my speculations. Hopefully they’ll add to your appreciation of the book?

The following are my observations in re Confederacy:

Part One – the dysfunctional family.  Remember this year’s Novel Club “theme” is the “dysfunctional family.” In Toole’s writing there’s no shortage of dysfunctionality – all the books characters manifested it in one form or another.  Ignatius managed to engender “dysfunction” in virtually every relationship he established but for his rapport with Miss Trixie and the exotic dancer Darlene. Otherwise all his interpersonal relations were adversarial, contentious, and as I said earlier – “over the top.” Irene, the over-indulgent, accommodating, long widowed mother of our protagonist … spent all her inheritance on “making Ignatius smart” (as she told Darlene in Chapter 1.) Following that meeting with Darlene in “The Night of Joy” she experienced a costly accident involving a French Quarter balcony. This accident precipitated a maternal backlash which resulted in, Irene demanding that Ignatius seek out employment – an endeavor he had managed to avoid.  Ignatius spent his time watching degenerate TV programs, attending despicable movies, writing incoherently, and/or reading. Simply Reilly very much wanted to maintain his sloth. Prior to the referenced accident, he was able to bellow, coerce, and intimidate his mother into giving him his way. But his mother’s response to the un-foreseen financial obstacle she faced was to demand that Ignatius scour the papers, and look, until he found a job. With the money this highly educated eccentric was supposed to earn, they would collectively be able to pay the aggrieved landlord requisite installments which would enable him to repair his building’s balcony. A mother’s pleading was matched by her son’s bellicosity – no effective communication between mother and son was ever demonstrated. Oedipal bonds were never severed, they didn’t exist ab initio.  Ignatius functioned from a position of self-perceived superiority; therefore, all his interpersonal relations were bound to be challenging.  “Dysfunctionality” moreover was not limited to just the family – it was, as I said before, prevalent everywhere in Ignatius’s world, from: “The Crusade for Moorish Dignity” to “Save the World Thru Degeneracy.”  I wonder, as the book concluded with the lifting of his abdominal blockage, whether Myrna was able to reverse the historic discord which previously characterized their relationship?

Pat Two – the book, I suggest,  may be a satire focused on the emerging social issues of the time. I posit that Toole may have hid his book’s underlying messages behind a veneer of humor. His message was not a treatise on dysfunction, but rather, a poke and a stab at the various social issues that were brewing in 1962. The book includes commentary on a kaleidoscope of social issues: race relations, alienation from established religion, free speech, homo-sexuality, community/police relations, freedom of sexual expression, labor-management relations, and higher education – to name some, but not all, of the “social conditions” he satirized.              

Part Three – the protagonist - thoughts on the possible source of the author’s inspiration:  Toole, I felt, had to have some discernible “inspiration” for the character - Ignatius Reilly, and the complexities he wantonly distributed to everyone who crossed his path. Tonight, I’m going to take a bit of a flyer, and posit, that I think the model for Ignatius Reilly was an actual person, one Ignatius Donnelly – an author, a populist, the founder of a Utopian community,  and a believer in the use of The Wheel of  Fortune. Who was Ignatius Donnelly? Firstly, he was a US Congressman from Minnesota, in 1892 a Vice Presidential candidate for the People’s Party, and a big believer in conspiracy theories. He urged the formation group that was to provide the resistance to these conspiracies – he called it “The Brotherhood of Destruction.” Physically a huge man, acknowledged as brilliant (or crazy smart) by all who knew him, Donnelly became well known for his advocacy of the Baconites, or those who believed that Francis Bacon, not William Shakespeare, wrote the plays and sonnets attributed to the later. He went so far as to lecture at both Oxford and Cambridge on the subject.  Ignatius  Donnelly lived from 1831 thru the  year 1900, and to a greater or lesser extent,  he allied himself with a group of Shakespearian scholars: William F. Friedman, Elizabeth Wells Gallup, Constance Pott, and Dr. Orville Ward Owen inventor of the Wheel of Fortune – better known as a cipher wheel. Each of the above, including Ignatius Donnelly, believed ciphers were encoded in Shakespeare’s works. If decoded – with or without the aid of Ward’s Wheel of Fortune, it would prove that Francis Bacon not Shakespeare was the world’s pre-eminent writer. 

Then, at least in my view, there are numerous, and not purely coincidental links between the character Ignatius Reilly and the now, all but forgotten, late 19th century real person, Ignatius Donnelly. What hard evidence do I have? The answer is “none.”  Indulge my speculations a bit further:

1)     Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius has been characterized as the single most influential work in the West on Medieval and early Renaissance Christianity. As noted, in tonight’s novel, Severinus Boethius, (born approximately 480AD and was executed in 524AD) in Consolation of Philosophy expanded on the notion of the “Rota Fortunae” or “Wheel of Fortune.” My speculation is that during Toole’s college years he studied Boethius, and learned about the “Wheel of Fortune or Rota Fortuna.” Coincidently, Toole must have read about a device called the “Wheel of Fortune” that was designed in Detroit for the purpose of delving into the issue of the veracity of Shakespeare’s authorship by mechanizing the search for ciphers in his books. I suggest that in reading about the Detroit device, Toole learned something of the life of Ignatius Donnelly – and from there developed the novelistic character - Ignatius J. Reilly.
2)     Boethius is important to Confederation of Dunces in that the book Consolation of Philosophy makes its way thru the hands of a number of characters in Confederation – although, but for Reilly, no one really seems to have either read or tried to read – Consolation. Who was Boethius? He was born in Rome of an important family – both of his parents claimed as ancestors: Roman emperors, consuls, and Popes. Boethius was a formidable scholar, fluent in Greek and other languages. He completed translations (from Greek to Latin) of portions of  both Aristotle and Plato’s works; he classified music in his work De Musica; transitioned – rather curiously,  from Christianity to paganism (although he is still venerated as a Saint in the Roman Catholic Church); he wrote on the subject of “universals” meaning –“would concepts exist whether anyone thought of them or whether they only exist as ideas,”  he was an expert in mathematics – in particular geometry, and he managed to find the time to serve as head of all government and court services for Theodoric the Great – the man who had him executed.
3)     While in prison, awaiting his execution, Boethius wrote Consolation focusing on Rota Fortunae, the wheel of fortune that belongs to the goddess Fortuna. Fortuna spins the wheel, capriciously, and at random, changing the positions of those on the wheel – some suffer misfortune while others prosper. Boethius says the Wheel never stays still – it’s always turning. Medieval writers tended to use the wheel to dwell on the downfall of the mighty and tragic aspect of life. Boethius claims that no man can ever truly be secure unless he has been forsaken by Fortune; that fame and wealth is fleeting; and that the ultimate superiority rests in “things of the mind.” Happiness comes from within and is not imperiled by the vagaries of the Rota Fortunae. In this thumbnail summary, what we learn from Boethius is what we see in the life of Ignatius Reilly.

There’s much more philosophical “speculation” that I could indulge in, but my principle point tonight is this: while viewed by many, possibly including Walker Percy, as simply “a funny book,” there is, if one plumbs the depths, a lot more to Confederacy of Dunces than a chuckle. On the other hand, it is on occasion “fun” for the Novel Club to read something that’s both amusing yet insightful.

We might conclude tonight by listening,  excerpts from Carmina Burana – where the Wheel of Fortune and Fortunae play significant roles …Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi (Fortune Empress of the World) and Fortunae Vulnera (I Bemoan the Wounds of Fortune.)