Fiction

[knoxharrington]

Someone here mentioned The Tortilla Curtain.  Just read.  At the risk of sounding borderline rabid, this may be the finest novel of modern American life that I have ever read.  I can say, without hyperbole, that there were moments in the book where I almost couldn't breathe, and would be caught between the desire to slow down and savor Boyle's brilliant and effortless-seeming writing and the desire to hurry ahead to see how various ordeals of the Mexican couple played out. 

Barton (or was it Bosox -- apologies for brain bleed here...)-- you were mentioning short stories of Boyle -- do you have a favorite collection of his?

[bosox18d]

I haven't read any of his recent collections but I loved"If the River was Whiskey".I don't think I was the one that mentioned Tortilla Curtain but I rank it right behind World's End as my favorite Boyle novel and ahead of Drop City as my third.Living in LA made Tortilla Curtain even more disturbing to me as what he writes is so real.

[barton]

Don't have a fave among the collections -- they are all superb.  I started Drop City and didn't get into it, but I want to get back and give it another try.  Tortilla Curtain is my favorite, so far.   World's End and Riven Rock are on my to do list.  Whatever my response to them will be, I suspect I will continue to view Tortilla Curtain as simply one of the most important books that every North American should read. 

[whiskeypriest]

I haven't read any of his recent collections but I loved"If the River was Whiskey"....

If I was what?

I still await Boyle's coming memoir, you Used to Say I Was a Genius So Why Don't You Bastards Buy My Books Anymore, Huh?

[pugetopolis]

Pilar del Rio

“If I’d died before I met you, Pilar,
I’d have died feeling much older.”
—José Saramago

pilar del rio—serves coffee
in demitasses—she’s elegant
from seville—saramago’s second wife
nearly 30 years—younger than him
she meets him—in the mid-’80s
lecturing—in lisbon…
“blimunda”—del rio’s e-mail avatar
from baltasar—blimunda
a novel…

[madupont]

For those who have been following Treme, the lead character of this novel may remind you of a few on the set of the tv series.


A Confederacy of Dunces
by John Kennedy Toole
 
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Customer Comments (14)
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ISBN13: 9780802130204
ISBN10: 0802130208
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Synopses & Reviews
Publisher Comments:
When a true genius appears in the world,
You may know him by this sign, that the dunces
Are all in confederacy against him.
Jonathan Swift, "Thoughts on Various Subjects, Moral and Diverting"
"A green hunting cap squeezed the top of the fleshy balloon of a head. The green earflaps, full of large ears and uncut hair and the fine bristles that grew in the ears themselves, stuck out on either side like turn signals indicating two directions at once."

So enters one of the most memorable characters in American fiction, Ignatius J. Reilly.

John Kennedy Toole's hero is one, "huge, obese, fractious, fastidious, a latter-day Gargantua, a Don Quixote of the French Quarter. His story bursts with wholly original characters, denizens of New Orleans' lower depths, incredibly true-to-life dialogue, and the zaniest series of high and low comic adventures." (Henry Kisor, Chicago Sun-Times).

Ignatius J. Reilly is a flatulent frustrated scholar deeply learned in Medieval philosophy and American junk food, a brainy mammoth misfit imprisoned in a trashy world of Greyhound Buses and Doris Day movies. He is in violent revolt against the entire modern age.

Ignatius' peripatetic employment takes him from Levy Pants, where he leads a workers' revolt, to the French Quarter, where he waddles behind a hot dog wagon that serves as his fortress.

A Confederacy of Dunces is an American comic masterpiece that outswifts Swift, whose poem gives the book its title. Set in New Orleans, the novel bursts into life on Canal Street under the clock at D. H. Holmes department store. The characters leave the city and literature forever marked by their presences — Ignatius and his mother; Mrs. Reilly's matchmaking friend, Santa Battaglia; Miss Trixie, the octogenarian assistant accountant at Levy Pants; inept, bemused Patrolman Mancuso; Jones, the jivecat in spaceage dark glasses. Juvenal, Rabelais, Cervantes, Fielding, Swift, Dickens — their spirits are all here. Filled with unforgettable characters and unbelievable plot twists, shimmering with intelligence, and dazzling in its originality, Toole's comic classic just keeps getting better year after year.

Released by Louisiana State University Press in April 1980 and published in paperback in 1981 by Grove Press, A Confederacy of Dunces is nothing short of a publishing phenomenon. Turned down by countless publishers and submitted by the author's mother years after his suicide, the book won the 1981 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Today, there are over 1,500,000 copies in print worldwide in eighteen languages.

Review:
"This novel records the adventures of Ignatius J. Reilly, a Falstaffian slob who is also one of the most memorable characters in recent fiction. Ignatius wallows through New Orleans reminiscing about Abelard, Boethius, and Batman, while railing against Freud, academics, and Greyhound buses. Like his creator, who committed suicide in 1969, Ignatius never finds his place in the modern world. This comic novel, on the other hand, should have no trouble finding a niche in the literary world; it is a superb mock-heroic tale that is full of the exuberance—and the profound solitude—of life." Reviewed by Daniel Weiss, Virginia Quarterly Review (Copyright 2006 Virginia Quarterly Review)
Review:
"A masterwork...the novel astonishes with its inventiveness...it is nothing less than a grand comic fugue." The New York Times Book Review
Review:
"Astonishing, extravagant, lunatic, satiric, and peculiar, but it is above all genuine, skillful, and unsentimentally comic." Booklist
Review:
"A corker, an epic comedy, a rumbling, roaring avalanche of a book." The Washington Post
Review:
"A masterpiece of character comedy...brilliant, relentless, delicious, perhaps even classic." Kirkus Reviews
Review:
"Crazy magnificent once-in-a-blue-moon first novel....There is a touch of genius about Toole and what he has created." Publishers Weekly
Review:
"An astonishingly good novel, radiant with intelligence and artful high comedy." Newsweek
Review:
"You'll be hooked, rolling on the floor laughing at the antics of main character Ignatius Reilly, an intellectual deadbeat goof-off and all his misadventures in New Orleans....This book has a Pulitzer to back up my claims of greatness." Susan Reinhardt, Gainsville Times
Review:
"One of the funniest books ever written...it will make you laugh out loud till your belly aches and your eyes water." The New Republic
Review:
"I found myself laughing out loud again and again as I read this ribald book." Christian Science Monitor
Review:
"The episodes explode one after the other like fireworks on a stormy night. No doubt about it, this book is destined to become a classic." The Baltimore Sun
Review:
"A brilliant and evocative novel." San Francisco Chronicle
Review:
"The dialogue is superbly mad. You simply sweep along, unbelievably entranced." The Boston Globe
Review:
"If a book's price is measured against the laughs it provokes, A Confederacy of Dunces is the bargain of the year." Time
Review:
"An astonishingly original and assured comic spree." New York
Review:
"As hilarious as it indisputably is, A Confederacy of Dunces is a serious and important work." Los Angeles Herald Examiner
Synopsis:
Foreword by Walker Percy. A spectacular, Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by this master of comedy. beloved by readers and critics alike. The place is the French Quarter, the character denizens of New Orleans' lower depths.
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About the Author
John Kennedy Toole was born in New Orleans in 1937. He received a master's degree in English from Columbia University and taught at Hunter and the University of Southwestern Louisiana. In 1969, frustrated at his failure to interest a publisher in A Confederacy of Dunces, he committed suicide. Toole's book was eventually published, after his mother brought the work to the attention of Walker Percy and insisted that he read her son's manuscript. Percy became one of the novel's many admirers and The Confederacy of Dunces would eventually be awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1981. Following that posthumous success, The Neon Bible, which Toole had written when he was sixteen, was first published in 1989.
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Average customer rating based on 14 comments:
 
 
Leslie Pop, June 20, 2010 (view all comments by Leslie Pop)
I cannot believe that I have lived in Louisiana my entire life and am just now reading this book at age 31. I have always avoided it, thinking it was a stuffy commentary on Louisiana politics- how wrong I was!! It is a hilarious story, truly full of both insight and absurd moments that will make you laugh like a lunatic. I see these characters every day of my life, and Toole's rendering of New Orleans culture is spot-on for both the time of the story and today. This book is as close to literary perfection as I've ever seen.
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Gypsi, June 5, 2010 (view all comments by Gypsi)
What a book, what a masterpiece! A comedy, the likes of which I've never read, with characters so unbelievable real I had to occasional take breaks from reading it.

The prose surprised me again and again with such beauty, wit and genius. From the first page, I was held in thrall to Toole's talent: "Full, pursed lips protruded beneath the bushy black mustache and, at their corners, sank into little folds filled with disapproval and potato chip crumbs."

The everyday mundane, sometimes disgusting, bits of the lives of these people combined with Toole's writing is just incredible. It makes for such an unforgettable experience.

Toole has his some of characters talk his local dialect, which in many books, is so confusing, so difficult to read or to decipher. He makes it work. No, not work, he makes it seamless, perfect, brilliant. I'm not reading their words--I can hear them talking. It's beautiful.

The story centers around Ignatius J. Reilly, as does everything if he can make it, an overweight, over-educated, overly demanding man living with his Mamma, holed up in his bedroom, drinking Dr. Nut and scribbling about Medieval history and the problems of today. This has gone on for many years, and would continue for many more except for a family emergency which pushes his Mamma to take the unusual step of standing up to Ignatius and telling him he must get a job. His world is shaken, he is spiraling out of control, Fortuna has spun against him.

And thus, with much GI troubles and vitriolic ranting and railing against peoples in general and particular, Ignatius goes out into the world for the second time since college. The omnipotent reader is privy to both the actual facts and often, Ignatius's more flattering description of events as he writes about it later, with the view of future publication, in a Big Chief tablet in his room.

There were times I didn't laugh, though, but that was when I saw myself in this gargantuan idealistic slob, this over-educated moron trying to impose his world views on all around him. That's when, instead of laughing, I gave an inwardly embarrassed chuckle and moved on quickly.

There's an underlying element of sadness to the novel, to me anyway. Is it knowing this is Toole's only novel and there'll be nothing else to read? Is it knowing that he committed suicide, and feeling that sadness seep into the pages? Or is it simply knowing that Ignatius is destined to bumble every attempt at every thing merely because Fortuna has it out for his overwhelming conceit? I think it's a mix of all three, and this melancholy tempers the outright hilarity, balancing it, making it even more thought-provoking.

Other residents of New Orleans find their paths crossed with Ignatius, usually to their dismay, and always find their lives changed in some way as a result. The vagrant, the man afraid of the "comuniss", the girl wanting to be an exotic dancer, and many more. . . One reads about them again and again and wonders, how will they all come together? Trust Toole, he's a genius--the plot themes and characters come together like orchestral themes resulting in a crescendoing finale of stunning proportions, and then stream off again, a solo here, a duet there, until the final page. I was genuinely worried at some points, as to how the book would end, how Toole would leave Ignatius. Never fear, dear reader, as Ignatius himself might have said. It's a masterpiece through and through.
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bwahoo, January 21, 2010 (view all comments by bwahoo)
This masterpiece is by far my favorite book. It does not matter what writing style or theme you prefer, this is a must read. My first copy was purchased at Powell's on Burnside. I read it twice then borrowed it out to an ex-girlfriend. Instead of making contact with her after we broke up to get it back I figured I'll do her a favor by letting her keep it.
I bought my second copy in Minneapolis at a used bookstore, read it because of the "Dunces Jones" I was having, then lent it out to a friend on the condition that he would give it to someone else when he was done. I didn't care if I got it back as long as it was making the rounds and enlightening others to it's genius and word mastery.
My third copy was purchased back in Portland while I was visiting family this last spring/summer. I read it that summer and refuse to let this copy go. I love being able to pick it up anytime and read a chapter or two.

This is a smart and funny satire done so well that the powers that be awarded it's author the Pulitzer Prize posthumously. Every sentence makes me laugh in a way that is unique to A Confederacy of Dunces. Do yourself a favor and read it. If you want a sample then go to the smartest, funniest friend you have and borrow it. They will have it. If you strike out then buy a copy. You need a masterpiece in your library, right???
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Product Details
ISBN:9780802130204
Author:Toole, John Kennedy
Publisher:Grove Press
Foreword:Percy, Walker
Author:Percy, Walker
Location:New York, N.Y. :
Subject:Literary
Subject:Fiction
Subject:Mothers and sons
Subject:Louisiana
Subject:Classics
Subject:Humorous Stories
Subject:Humorous
Subject:New orleans
Subject:Young men
Subject:Humorous fiction
Subject:New Orleans (La.) Fiction.
Subject:New Orleans (La.)
Copyright:c198
Edition Number:20
Edition Description:Anniversary
Series:Evergreen Book
Series Volume:no. 6
Publication Date:January 1994
Binding:Paperback
Grade Level:General/trade
Language:English
Illustrations:Y
Pages:416
Dimensions:8.22x5.36x.90 in. .78 lbs.
Age Level:from 12

[weezo]

New fiction by Bob Mauro, long enjoyed as a playwright :

http://www.amazon.com/Goodfellas-Bad-Girls-Tale-Larceny/dp/1453628924/ref=cm_rna_own_review_prod/191-4228812-3401530

[barton]

RIP writer/illustrator and interesting character, Harvey Pekar. 

Whiskey:  Well, they are still buying The Tortilla Curtain, as it's become one of those Community Read books in several cities, so libraries are buying copies (pback) by the truckload.

 

[madupont]

barton,
I'm assuming that you saw the interview with Pekar in the Music forum ?
It is the most recent postings in which Harvey's "Opera" has been composed and sections performed after an interview with him. It is really quite  good. Harvey is however someone you have to get used to in terms of "elocution".  It's something that you have to develop a tolerance for listening through any length of time.  Probably unlike his writing?

[Lhoffman]

Pekar's writing..depends on the genre.  

Music writing:
http://weeklywire.com/ww/archives/authors/austin_harveypekar.html

comics related:

http://www.smithmag.net/pekarproject/
-----------------------------

another interview:  Walrus comics.
http://www.walruscomix.com/pekarinterview.html

There's also the film adaptation of his comic American Splendor.

Also, did a graphic novel on Studs Terkel's Working.  

[nytempsperdu]

Also, did a graphic novel on Studs Terkel's Working.

What a great idea, that's one of my touchstone books. 

[nnyhav]

appreciations:
http://www.artsjournal.com/quickstudy/2010/07/harvey_pekar.html
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2010/07/13/jeet-heer-the-legacy-of-the-every-mans-hero/
http://philnugentexperience.blogspot.com/2010/07/harvey-comics.html

[whiskeypriest]

RIP writer/illustrator and interesting character, Harvey Pekar. 

Whiskey:  Well, they are still buying The Tortilla Curtain, as it's become one of those Community Read books in several cities, so libraries are buying copies (pback) by the truckload.

 

Pekar didn't do the illustrations.

[barton]

I knew that -- was typing too fast and trying to convey a writer whose work was often with accompanying illustrations, i.e. graphic novels, comics.  I know that Crumb et al. wielded the brush for him. 

[nytempsperdu]

RIP writer/illustrator and interesting character, Harvey Pekar. 

This probably belongs in Television but the subject came up here. Last night I saw the (re)broadcast of Anthony Bourdain's Cleveland odyssey on No Reservations which included outings with Pekar and a friend (can't recall the name) -- Bourdain was unusually respectful--that part of the show was preferable to the part where Bourdain went out for a meal with one of the Ramones after a brief section at the R&R Hall of Fame (about which Bourdain expressed his skepticism at the very idea of a R&R museum).