A Confederacy of Dunces (1 Viewer)

[ignatiusjreilly]

In another thread, @worrierking was commenting on my username, and it got me thinking about the novel. I first read it in high school after my best friend showed me an article where they asked a number of comedians to list their favorite novel, and just about every one of them listed ACoD. Have since re-read it a few times, but it's been years, so I'm probably due for another round.

I've also been wondering if I should turn my 11-year-old son onto it. Main questions are a) would he like it, and b) is any of the subject matter age-inappropriate? I'm remembering there were a lot of masturbation jokes, which I don't consider an automatic dealbreaker, but maybe there's other stuff I'm forgetting.

Also, if you never have read it, a) what are you doing in this thread and b) do yourself a favor and go read it right now. My namesake is truly one of the greatest literary characters I've ever encountered. Also, I've only ever been to New Orleans once in my life, but I would imagine if you're more familiar with the city there are plenty of Easter eggs that make the story even more enjoyable.

 

[ChiefD]

I've tried to read that book a number of times and given it an honest effort. I KNOW it's a classic and people love it. But after about 100 pages I just get annoyed at that idiot.   

And say to myself: "why am I reading this?"

And no, I would definitely not give it to my 11 year old son to read. He needs to be older, in my opinion.

 

[Caveman33]

I suppose it depends on the personality and tastes of your son.  I think I was 21+ when I read it but as you said, there isn't anything inappropriate for a kid. 

IIRC, the author could not get this book published, and he was a college professor.  Maybe he did not try very hard?  After he committed suicide, his mother presented the book to someone and they were convinced to publish.  

 

[ignatiusjreilly]

I've tried to read that book a number of times and given it an honest effort. I KNOW it's a classic and people love it. But after about 100 pages I just get annoyed at that idiot.   

And say to myself: "why am I reading this?"

And no, I would definitely not give it to my 11 year old son to read. He needs to be older, in my opinion.

Yeah, I could definitely see how it might not be for everyone. The fact that he's such an off-putting character is what I love about the book, but your mileage may vary.

Thanks for the feedback re: my son. Probably worth waiting a few years. 

 

[ignatiusjreilly]

I suppose it depends on the personality and tastes of your son.  I think I was 21+ when I read it but as you said, there isn't anything inappropriate for a kid. 

IIRC, the author could not get this book published, and he was a college professor.  Maybe he did not try very hard?  After he committed suicide, his mother presented the book to someone and they were convinced to publish.  

Yeah, that's an amazing story in itself. The person his mother went to was the novelist Walker Percy. He memorably described the encounter in the forward to the book:

Perhaps the best way to introduce this novel -- which on my third reading of it astounds me even more than the first -- is to tell of my first encounter with it. While I was teaching at Loyola in 1976 I began to get telephone calls from a lady unknown from me. What she proposed was preposterous. It was not that she had written a couple of chapters of a novel and wanted to get into my class. It was that her son, who was dead, had written an entire novel during the early sixties, a big novel, and she wanted me to read it. Why would I want to do that? I asked her. Because it is a great novel, she said.

Over the years I have become very good at getting out of things I don't want to do. And if ever there was something I didn't want to do, this was surely it: to deal with the mother of a dead novelist and, worst of all, to have to read a manuscript that she said was great, and that, as it turned out, was a badly smeared, scarcely readable carbon.

But the lady was persistent, and it somehow came to pass that she stood in my office handing me the hefty manuscript. There was no getting out of it; only one hope remained -- that I could read a few pages and that they would be bad enough for me, in good conscience, to read no farther. Usually I can do just that. Indeed the first paragraph often suffices. My only fear was that this one might not be bad enough, or might be just good enough, so that I would have to keep reading.

In this case I read on. And on. First with the sinking feeling that it was not bad enough to quit, then with a prickle of interest, then a growing excitement, and finally an incredulity: surely it was not possible that it was so good. I shall resist the temptation to say what first made me gape, grin, laugh out loud, shake my head in wonderment. Better let the reader make the discovery on his own.

 

[CletiusMaximus]

Eleven is way too young for Confederacy imo - not because of inappropriate content but because it would be very hard for a kid that age to get through the book (unless of course your eleven year old is a rare, extraordinarily exceptional kid - certainly possible.)

 

[El Floppo]

I've tried to read that book a number of times and given it an honest effort. I KNOW it's a classic and people love it. But after about 100 pages I just get annoyed at that idiot.   

And say to myself: "why am I reading this?"

Ive tried a couple times too over the decades...just never pulled me in so I pulled the plug. My english major brother's favorite book and loved by too many people i respect...so i guess i should give it another shot. 

 

[Ilov80s]

Eleven is way too young for Confederacy imo - not because of inappropriate content but because it would be very hard for a kid that age to get through the book (unless of course your eleven year old is a rare, extraordinarily exceptional kid - certainly possible.)

Yeah, if the kid wants to read it and enjoys it, cool. However, it didn't strike me as a book most 11 year olds would enjoy. 

 

[ignatiusjreilly]

Eleven is way too young for Confederacy imo - not because of inappropriate content but because it would be very hard for a kid that age to get through the book (unless of course your eleven year old is a rare, extraordinarily exceptional kid - certainly possible.)

Yeah, he is an advanced reader, but I still think it makes sense to wait. I don't want to repeat the mistake I made a few years ago with The Phantom Tollbooth. I had absolutely loved it as a kid, but at the time my son read it (at my encouragement), he was old enough to understand most of the puns, but I don't think he appreciated them the way he would have a few years later. Then, by the time he reached that age, he had already written the book off and had no interest in giving it another shot.

I find that unless I have a specific event to anchor my memory to, I have no idea how old I was when I experienced certain books or movies as a kid, so I never know when it's appropriate to introduce my own children to them.

 

[Don Quixote]

It has been awhile since I've read, but I'd agree that 11 seems too early for it. I think I read it during college years. I think the humor would be more understandable at that age, and I recall the vocabulary causing me to open the dictionary to look up words several times.

 

[worrierking]

Ignatius is one of my all-time favorite characters.  I get why people may not like the book as much as I do.  The other characters are not nearly as funny as Ignatius. The book is politically incorrect for modern times, both on race and sexuality.  If you are not familiar with New Orleans accents, you might not be in tune to the brilliant usage of language by Mrs. Reilly and her friends.  

It's also a shock to read a book where the main character is not a hero in any way.  In fact the entire point of the book is Ignatius being a goof in spite of his intellectual ambitions.  

I would wait to introduce your son.  The masturbation humor is a lot funnier when you are an adult who's actually had sex.

 

[Murph]

One of my all-time favorites but no way I would have appreciated it as an eleven year old.

 

[ignatiusjreilly]

Ignatius is one of my all-time favorite characters.  I get why people may not like the book as much as I do.  The other characters are not nearly as funny as Ignatius. The book is politically incorrect for modern times, both on race and sexuality.  If you are not familiar with New Orleans accents, you might not be in tune to the brilliant usage of language by Mrs. Reilly and her friends.  

It's also a shock to read a book where the main character is not a hero in any way.  In fact the entire point of the book is Ignatius being a goof in spite of his intellectual ambitions.  

I would wait to introduce your son.  The masturbation humor is a lot funnier when you are an adult who's actually had sex.

Well, considering I read it as a high-schooler who wasn't having lots of sex, I still found it pretty funny. 

 

[Runkle]

I've started it a couple of times, but didn't bother finishing it. Way overrated. 

 

[Kal El]

I’ve read it a time or two, but I never got the impression that it’s as funny as people say. The main character is unlivable, the secondary characters(what I remember of them) are not much better, and the book really doesn’t flow very well.

 

[Dwayne Hoover]

No offense but I found this book to be terrribly overrated.  I wanted to love it, I was really looking forward to reading it.  I was able to finish it and while it's been a while, I barely remember anything aside that I was disappointed with it.

Since we are talking about overrated books that are supposed to be funny. I put Catch 22 in a similar category.  That one I didn't finish.

 

[wilked]

Weird reactions in here. 
 

It remains my favorite book, hilarious through and through. But I live for dry humor and high brow humor, also love jokes that only hit 20% of the time but for those they hit they hit 200%. 
 

if you had to classify the humor in the book it’s “clever”. Or maybe “artful” 

I also love they could never quite figure out how to make it into a movie. Better that way 

 

[wilked]

I’ll say that it is helped that I lived in New Orleans for a few years. Helps understand the environment 

 

[rockaction]

Great book. It'll be totally lost on an eleven year-old. It really helps to have life experience to have rejected the politically correct outlook on things (as the book does so much of) and how it gets down to the real nub of the matter, which is a lot of truth for even a twenty year-old. But an eleven year-old won't get that element of it -- he or she likely hasn't even been indoctrinated into the shibboleths of our ultra-polite and untruthful popular culture.

A Confederacy of Dunces takes aim at old-time sin, and modern, sacred cows that disguise themselves as new virtues, and destroys the old-time sin and the new virtues through a flawed narrator and his accomplices. It's a reactionary book, really. A conflicted Catholic and (probably) homosexual writer wrote it, and the inherent conflict shows. Unfortunately for us, we were robbed of Toole's genius by his own hand likely because the conflicts that make the book so funny because of their contrast also render the impulses within the book irreconcilable, and possibly even tragic. (The last we see our hero is not in a good way, when you think about it.)

So, yeah, I'd hold off on the eleven year-old until he or she is out of college and experiencing modern, capitalistic real life for the first time.

 

[Caveman33]

No offense but I found this book to be terrribly overrated.  I wanted to love it, I was really looking forward to reading it.  I was able to finish it and while it's been a while, I barely remember anything aside that I was disappointed with it.

Since we are talking about overrated books that are supposed to be funny. I put Catch 22 in a similar category.  That one I didn't finish.

I set Catch-22 aside after a chapter or 2.  Our experience may have been influenced by expectations.  It might have taken a couple chapters before I started laughing at Confederacy and maybe under different circumstances I would have put it down as well.  I often dislike books where I feel the dialogue is artificial or the story line unbelievable.  Not sure if Confederacy is the most realistic, but I think there was an acceptable consistency to the characters.  Ignatius drives the story but the supporting characters are essential to the comedy.  I used to relish Myrna or Myra's letters almost as much as Ignatius.

 

[trader jake]

Enjoyed the book years ago, but it didn't become one I'll revisit.  Agree with the earlier comparison to Catch-22.  There's something that's been lost with these two books between when they were written and today.  Not in a "hey, you can't say that anymore" but in an aging of the humor.  I suspect they're just not as sharp joke-wise as they were when originally written.  That happens with comedy a lot quicker than drama or action.

Also, as others have noted, this book would be lost on an 11-year old.  At best they would view the narrator as an Inspector Gadget level bumbling idiot with the social commentary largely flying over their head.

If the kid is indeed an advanced reader at 11 they may be ready to read John Green novels, but even those may be a year or two away.  Some impactful stuff in those that may be more relatable to a younger reader.  If they enjoy sci-fi maybe "Ender's Game"?  That's a classic the right 11-year old could enjoy.