Semester Dos, Blog Eight

In A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole writes a story that takes place in New Orleans during the early 1960’s. This novel is quite well known and made famous for its vivid description or New Orleans. Unfortunately for me, I am quite unfamiliar with the city of New Orleans; so I might not have picked up on it as strongly as somebody that was. Although quite a lot of interesting political and international things were happening in the time period the book was based it, near nothing was actually described in the book. It would seem hard to write a whole entire book without once mentioning the presidential election, the peace corps, the Cuban missile crisis, or even the Vietnam war. Personally, I believe that Toole was using this to back the fact that Ignatius Riley was quite afraid of leaving New Orleans and didn’t seem to know much about the rest of the world through his regular life of writing, watching cartoons and movies, and “working”. I also see it as a symbol to prove that Ignatius was in fact a genius, and that you don’t need to know a lot of current events in order to be smart.

While all of this is great I have one personal favorite that really helps work the time period that this book was written in. Toole was incredible at describing exactly the way people talk. It starts with the beginning of the book when a man is talking about communists, however what he says is: “I’m telling you, the city was never like this. It’s the communiss” Well obviously that is the first sign of Toole be a great writer when it comes to dialogue. However as the book continues my all time favorite character started to develop. Jones, a black man and recent convict that got a job as a janitor at a bar working 5 days a week and only making $20 a week. Jones talks just about every single chapter of the book, and is quite a large character; and he sounds just a great as any black man in a Mark Twain novel. With great quotes lie "Whoa! If I'm gonna be a doorman, I gonna be the mos sabotagin doorman ever guarded a plantation. Ooo-wee. The cotton fiel be burn to the groun before I'm through." I would say that Toole does his best work when he writes dialogue, and that is a huge reason the read this book alone.