Top 100 Cool Novels, #97, Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
by Ernie on 23/08/07 at 1:56 pm
Cool novel #97: Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole (1980). Well, if we want to weigh in on heart, one of our five criteria for “coolness” in a novel, this book has more than a pound of it. Confederacy of Dunces is a triumph of Augustan wit grafted onto middle-late 20th century concerns; the Black Power movement becomes the Crusade for Moorish Dignity, and the central character, one of the most memorable and funniest in American literature, seeks to introduce a “monarchist” party alternative into an American politics divided between impatient progressives and angry reactionaries. 
The wonderfully satirical novel derives its title from the greatest English-language satirist, Jonathan Swift: “When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.”
It is also one of the great novels of New Orleans. The main character, Ignatius J. Reilly, is memorialized in a life-sized bronze statue in the lobby of the Chateau Sonesta Hotel.
The tragic and oddly heroic story of Toole’s suicide–after he failed miserably in attempts to publish his delightful and impeccably crafted novel–has contributed to the book’s enduring fame as a great American novel. 
Toole, the gifted and spurned American visionary, has become a hero to legions of talented (and untalented) writers who daily face incredible difficulty and hair-pulling frustration when attempting to get their books published. The posthumous success of the novel (his mother agitated tirelessly until novelist Walker Percy relented and agreed to help get the book published), including a Pulitzer prize and perennial best-seller status, is the dark shadow of the American writing dream.
