Kilbourn Public Library Book Club

For September the Kilbourn Public Library Book Discussion Group is reading A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole. 

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. Set in New Orleans, the novel bursts into life on Canal Street under the clock at D. H. Holmes department store.

A Confederacy of Dunces is an American comic masterpiece.  Toole's comic classic is filled with unforgettable characters and unbelievable plot twists, shimmering with intelligence, and dazzling in its originality. 

The first chapter of A Confederacy of Dunces  is generally thought to be among the funniest in American literature.  Do you agree?  What other comic novels remind you of A Confederacy of Dunces and why?

The city of New Orleans plays a central role in the novel, seeming to be a character in and of itself.  Could this novel have been set in another American city?

Project Ignatius and Myrna into the future.  They are supposed to be in love, but find themselves fighting before ever leaving the city.  Will they make it to New York?  Can New York survive Ignatius?  What possibilities do you see for them?

Is Ignatius purely lazy or does his attitude toward work reflect his disdain for the modern world of commerce? 

The book is elaborately plotted, but does it work?  What do you find unbelievable or improbable?

In the twenty-plus years since its publication A Confederacy of Dunces has become a cult novel.  What does that mean to you? 

Let us know what you think of A Confederacy of Dunces!