# Am I the only person who thinks 'Confederacy of Dunces' is tedious, humor-free, and overhyped? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [April 3, 2013, 10:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-the-only-person-who-thinks-confederacy-of-dunces-is-tedious-humor-free-and-overhyped/654718 "2013-04-03T10:30:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Mixolydian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/da6949/32.png) [@Mixolydian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mixolydian)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2013, 1:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-the-only-person-who-thinks-confederacy-of-dunces-is-tedious-humor-free-and-overhyped/654718/81 "2013-04-04T13:31:48Z")
I’m in the middle of _Confederacy_ and I’m enjoying it, although I’m not exactly burning my way through it. Ignatius is quite a unique protagonist. As an aside…for anyone who’s seen the movie “Hollywood Knights” with Robert Wuhl, Fran Drescher, etc. (“Volare?”)…is Stuart Pankin’s character Dudley supposed to be based around Ignatius? ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2013, 1:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-the-only-person-who-thinks-confederacy-of-dunces-is-tedious-humor-free-and-overhyped/654718/82 "2013-04-04T13:49:24Z")
> [@JLRogers](#): > > It is funny that one of the complaints raised in this thread is that the cover of the book is bad. No point in quoting the maxim to those who apparently have never heard it, but have any of you considered that the author might not have designed the cover to which you object? > > Regardless, it’s a shame that so many here seem to think the book is intended as a rip-roaring comedy lampooning that silly Ignatius and his zany antics. Read that way I can see how it wouldn’t be much fun. Not much material that is actually intended to be read that way is worth reading either. > > Maybe multi-camera sitcoms with laugh tracks and unchallenging humor would be better received? Just google Chuck Lorre and watch whatever he has most recently pinched out. > > This doesn’t speak well of you. Methods of Rationality is ham-handed and pretentious. Fan fiction is best avoided. What pretentious twaddle. ---
**Author:** ![GrandWino](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/grandwino/32/67_2.png) [@GrandWino](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GrandWino)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2013, 2:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-the-only-person-who-thinks-confederacy-of-dunces-is-tedious-humor-free-and-overhyped/654718/83 "2013-04-04T14:27:25Z")
Although I absolutely do love the book and don’t believe that it’s overhyped generally, I do think that the story of how the book was found and published adds to the allure and maybe causes some people to be less critical. ---
**Author:** ![Yorikke](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yorikke/32/4335_2.png) [@Yorikke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yorikke)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2013, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-the-only-person-who-thinks-confederacy-of-dunces-is-tedious-humor-free-and-overhyped/654718/84 "2013-04-04T15:42:33Z")
> [@Speak\_to\_me\_Maddie](#): > > On its own the book it fine for a read, I especially liked the scenes in the pants factory. The real problem with the novel is over-hype. It is often described as the funniest book ever written, or the the most hilarious American novel, etc. Ridiculous. I don’t know if it would make the top 50 humorous novels I have read. Perfectly stated, even your opinion on the Levy Pants scenes. ---
**Author:** ![madmonk28](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madmonk28/32/20811_2.png) [@madmonk28](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madmonk28)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2013, 3:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-the-only-person-who-thinks-confederacy-of-dunces-is-tedious-humor-free-and-overhyped/654718/85 "2013-04-04T15:47:15Z")
> [@Bob Ducca](#): > > To be fair, it’s not like he had an editor to give him advice. Fair point and I would bet his second novel could have been great. I think some of the hype of this novel is due to the circumstances of its publication. Had he not killed himself, the author probably would have matured into a fine writer. ---
**Author:** ![VinylTurnip](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/b2d939/32.png) [@VinylTurnip](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VinylTurnip)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2013, 5:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-the-only-person-who-thinks-confederacy-of-dunces-is-tedious-humor-free-and-overhyped/654718/86 "2013-04-04T17:07:49Z")
> [@RandMcnally](#): > > About eight years ago I picked up two books that I had heard were hilarious. Confederacy was one of them. > > I spend about an hour or so trying to get through it, then I just gave up. I grabbed the other book I got, which was _Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy_. Interesting. Add several years and I had the same experience, but the other way around. (I think. You don’t actually say what you thought of _HHGttG_, but from the context I assume you enjoyed it more.) ---
**Author:** ![RandMcnally](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b782af/32.png) [@RandMcnally](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RandMcnally)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2013, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-the-only-person-who-thinks-confederacy-of-dunces-is-tedious-humor-free-and-overhyped/654718/87 "2013-04-04T17:10:03Z")
> [@VinylTurnip](#): > > Interesting. Add several years and I had the same experience, but the other way around. > > (I think. You don’t actually say what you thought of _HHGttG_, but from the context I assume you enjoyed it more.) Correct. Devoured Hitchhiker’s, then immediately bought the next two books. ---
**Author:** ![Rick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/9f8e36/32.png) [@Rick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rick)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2013, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-the-only-person-who-thinks-confederacy-of-dunces-is-tedious-humor-free-and-overhyped/654718/88 "2013-04-04T17:56:29Z")
Personally I think after he wrote it Toole realized what a pice of shit it was and he then killed himself. Way over hyped. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Excellent](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f19dbf/32.png) [@Mr.Excellent](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Excellent)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2013, 6:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-the-only-person-who-thinks-confederacy-of-dunces-is-tedious-humor-free-and-overhyped/654718/89 "2013-04-04T18:59:58Z")
One of the depressing things about Confederacy of Dunces (and there are many) is that Ignatius really is just a thinly-veiled depiction of the author. That bumbling, malodorous oaf with no redeeming qualities? Yah, that’s how Toole saw himself. ---
**Author:** ![GrandWino](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/grandwino/32/67_2.png) [@GrandWino](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GrandWino)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2013, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-the-only-person-who-thinks-confederacy-of-dunces-is-tedious-humor-free-and-overhyped/654718/90 "2013-04-04T19:17:29Z")
> [@Mr.Excellent](#): > > One of the depressing things about Confederacy of Dunces (and there are many) is that Ignatius really is just a thinly-veiled depiction of the author. That bumbling, malodorous oaf with no redeeming qualities? Yah, that’s how Toole saw himself. Actually, just last week I was just having a conversation about this with an older lady that owns an old dusty bookshop in the French Quarter. She ran across Toole’s mother many times over the years and she told me that Mrs. Toole was always very quick to point out, and was quite adamant, that her son was almost nothing at all like Ignatius. ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2013, 7:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-the-only-person-who-thinks-confederacy-of-dunces-is-tedious-humor-free-and-overhyped/654718/91 "2013-04-04T19:24:02Z")
> [@Mr.Excellent](#): > > One of the depressing things about Confederacy of Dunces (and there are many) is that Ignatius really is just a thinly-veiled depiction of the author. That bumbling, malodorous oaf with no redeeming qualities? Yah, that’s how Toole saw himself. How do you know this? He was by all accounts considered not to be like Ignatius at all–instead being apparently a very urbane, witty, friendly and intelligent guy. Why do you think he saw himself otherwise? ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2013, 7:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-the-only-person-who-thinks-confederacy-of-dunces-is-tedious-humor-free-and-overhyped/654718/92 "2013-04-04T19:44:38Z")
According to the Wikipedia page, Ignatius’s slovenliness was based on a colleague of Toole’s. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2013, 7:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-the-only-person-who-thinks-confederacy-of-dunces-is-tedious-humor-free-and-overhyped/654718/93 "2013-04-04T19:47:31Z")
> [@Frylock](#): > > How do you know this? > > He was by all accounts considered not to be like Ignatius at all–instead being apparently a very urbane, witty, friendly and intelligent guy. > > Why do you think he saw himself otherwise? [Here’s an account of him](http://imagejournal.org/page/journal/articles/issue-24/griffin-confessions) by someone he dated. There are certainly aspects of Reilly in his personality, from the sounds of it, but not the “bumbling, malodorous oaf with no redeeming qualities” part. Doe this sound like a description of Ignatius? > [@](#): > > IT would be easy to fall in love with a man who could dance like John Kennedy Toole. > > Most people are surprised to hear it. On the whole, they suspect that Toole was something like his character, Ignatius Reilly, who surely must have had two left feet. (I’m not aware that the issue of Ignatius’s proficiency on the dance floor was ever raised in Toole’s masterwork A Confederacy of Dunces.) > > And Ken (for that’s what I called him) was also fun to hang with. ---
**Author:** ![Yookeroo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yookeroo/32/323_2.png) [@Yookeroo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yookeroo)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2013, 11:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-the-only-person-who-thinks-confederacy-of-dunces-is-tedious-humor-free-and-overhyped/654718/94 "2013-04-04T23:48:01Z")
> [@Bob Ducca](#): > > Can a Pulitzer Prize winning novel really be called “over-hyped”? Yes. That just adds to the hype. ---
**Author:** ![Beastly\_Rotter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/45deac/32.png) [@Beastly\_Rotter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beastly_Rotter)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2013, 2:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-the-only-person-who-thinks-confederacy-of-dunces-is-tedious-humor-free-and-overhyped/654718/95 "2013-04-05T02:19:46Z")
> [@Bob Ducca](#): > > Can a Pulitzer Prize winning novel really be called “over-hyped”? You’ve evidently not read [_Tinkers_.](http://www.tinkerspulitzer.com/?p=3) ---
**Author:** ![Troppus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/a587f6/32.png) [@Troppus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Troppus)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2013, 2:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-the-only-person-who-thinks-confederacy-of-dunces-is-tedious-humor-free-and-overhyped/654718/96 "2013-04-05T02:33:11Z")
> [@Beastly\_Rotter](#): > > You’ve evidently not read [_Tinkers_.](http://www.tinkerspulitzer.com/?p=3) Does this mean you don’t want my un-dogeared copy, spine still in-tact? Makes a great coaster… ---
**Author:** ![Beastly\_Rotter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/45deac/32.png) [@Beastly\_Rotter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beastly_Rotter)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2013, 2:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-the-only-person-who-thinks-confederacy-of-dunces-is-tedious-humor-free-and-overhyped/654718/97 "2013-04-05T02:50:09Z")
> [@Troppus](#): > > Does this mean you don’t want my un-dogeared copy, spine still in-tact? Makes a great coaster… Well, it wasn’t a terrible book, there were parts I did like. The matter of fact accounts of dying from the perspective of an old man whose body is gradually shutting down on him were very good. Nothing, though, can live up to that kind of breathless hype: you go in expecting what P G Wodehouse called “that ‘watcher of the skies when a new planet’ stuff”, and end up bitterly disappointed when it turns out to need a bloody good editor to whack on the head the three page run-on sentence lyrical descriptions of a ditch full of weeds. More dying, less lyrical weeds is all I’m saying. I feel pretty much the same about _CoD_: pretty funny in parts, a good first effort, next time tidy up the rambling structure a bit and give it a better resolution. ---
**Author:** ![Maserschmidt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/maserschmidt/32/18829_2.png) [@Maserschmidt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maserschmidt)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2013, 3:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-the-only-person-who-thinks-confederacy-of-dunces-is-tedious-humor-free-and-overhyped/654718/98 "2013-04-05T03:00:22Z")
God I hated this book. Handed to me by someone whose taste I had previously trusted 100%, I hated both the plot and the character, and did not find it funny. ---
**Author:** ![Mister\_Rik](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mister_rik/32/491_2.png) [@Mister\_Rik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mister_Rik)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2013, 4:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-the-only-person-who-thinks-confederacy-of-dunces-is-tedious-humor-free-and-overhyped/654718/99 "2013-04-05T04:29:28Z")
> [@Bob Ducca](#): > > To be fair, it’s not like he had an editor to give him advice. I know it’s not necessarily an authoritative source, but [this Cracked article](http://www.cracked.com/article_20285_5-hilarious-reasons-publishers-rejected-classic-best-sellers_p2.html) has this to say: > [@](#): > > In contrast to the other entries on this list, when young struggling writer John Kennedy Toole shipped his precious manuscript off to Simon & Schuster, it immediately garnered the attention of the senior editor. That senior editor was Robert Gottlieb, and while he saw the novel’s potential, he also thought it wasn’t quite where it needed to be. So he embarked on a string of successive requests for revisions, which Toole readily complied with because, hey, if a big-time publisher shows interest in your manuscript, you damn well do as he says. But Gottlieb eventually lost interest in the book, writing: > > _“With all its wonderfulness … [the book] does not have a reason. It isn’t really about anything. And that’s something no one can do anything about.”_ > > Again, it’s feedback that in retrospect probably looks silly (starting from around the time it won the Pulitzer), but the point is, Simon & Schuster didn’t want A Confederacy of Dunces, and nobody else did, either. > > Five years later, the author killed himself. So he did have an editor, but I’m not sure if it’s known whether the manuscript his mother was shopping around included the revisions he made for Simon & Schuster, or if it was his actual, original manuscript. ---
**Author:** ![Sitnam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Sitnam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sitnam)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2013, 4:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-the-only-person-who-thinks-confederacy-of-dunces-is-tedious-humor-free-and-overhyped/654718/100 "2013-04-05T04:53:16Z")
Rather than sympathizing with him, I ended up hating the man. He was Sheldon without a job living with and torturing his enabling mother. The story was ok. It wasn’t funny but I don’t laugh out loud at many books so I can’t mark it down for that. Essentially it was a character study of a person I grew to despise. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-the-only-person-who-thinks-confederacy-of-dunces-is-tedious-humor-free-and-overhyped/654718.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-the-only-person-who-thinks-confederacy-of-dunces-is-tedious-humor-free-and-overhyped/654718.md?page=6)