In my hunt for a book that was entirely new to me, I came across A Confederacy of Dunces. According to the dust jacket, this was a comedy. It described the book as “an epic comedy”, “one of the funniest books ever written”, and declared that “it will make you laugh out loud till your belly aches”. I am a huge fan of comedy and have drawn unwanted attention to myself multiple times by laughing out loud while reading on the bus or in a classroom. It was an easy sell.
The plot of A Confederacy of Dunces orbits around a fat and arrogant thirty-year-old man named Ignatius J. Reilly and his various misadventures. Ignatius lives at home with his unfortunate mother, neither of which are gainfully employed, until a drunken car crash forces Ignatius into the workforce to help pay for damages.
Now, either I have no concept of comedy or this book isn’t funny. At all. Not only did I not experience any of the aforementioned laughing out loud, I actually felt heart-racing rage on multiple occasions, furious with indignation at the behaviour of the characters. Characters that are constantly lying, manipulating, and verbally abusing each other. The main character is a smug, arrogant, self-aggrandizing asshole, and quite possibly the original modern day neckbeard of fiction. At no point did I feel anything except contempt for most of the cast. It is an extremely common occurrence for characters to go from a seemingly ordinary conversational tones to screaming and bellowing at their audience. It was like peering through a window into the household of an abusive alcoholic, where a constant fog of dread hangs over the occupants, living in fear of the unpredictable trigger that spurs a shift in the demeanour of their tormentor. That’s not comedy. That’s depressing.
At this point, I feel that I should offer a verdict of sorts: I enjoyed this book. Quite a lot, in fact. Its characters are lush and quirky. Its setting is authentic and engaging. Its subplots and dialogue are all extremely endearing. I legitimately cared about the potential outcome for multiple characters. The style of the writing is sometimes overly verbose and boring, and I feel that it broke the 4th and 8th commandments, but those are small complaints. However, billing A Confederacy of Dunces as a comedy is a massive disservice to the nature of its content.
Even though it’s an older book, I prefer not to potentially spoil anything regarding the ending. I will say that for me it was bittersweet. Some things are resolved while others are not, and as satisfying as the desired resolutions are, the unresolved aspects of the story left a knot of bitterness in my gut. I desired closure and did not receive it, but in a way, perhaps it is stronger as a story for the visceral feelings that it creates.
