a confederacy of dunces
LaserWolf
Portland Oregon 11,517 Posts
Not Civil War related.
Just reread this classic.
Who digs?
Best book ever?
Overrated?
No movie? Just as well.
Just reread this classic.
Who digs?
Best book ever?
Overrated?
No movie? Just as well.
Comments
too bad john kennedy toole didn't get recognition in his own lifetime.
Great book, and the story of how it even got published 11 yrs after his suicide is mega. Anyone ride for the neon bible?
As for a film version, probably a good thing that it hasn't come together, but it's been one of those projects that's been tossed around endlessly without ever having the right script, the right star, and the right funding all at once. I remember about 5 years back there was talk of Will Ferrell taking on Ignatius...
Refreshing my memory on wiki, there've been some amazing combos that almost got off the ground:
--John Belushi and Richard Pryor w/ Harold Ramis directing, thwarted by Belushi's death
--John Waters directing Divine
--David Gordon Green directing and Soderbergh producing Wil Ferrell
i really enjoyed it when i read it for the first time. i read it for the second time about 2 months ago and agree with everything you said above. i couldn't wait for it to be over.
JKT may be the best writer of American vernacular dialogue.
As good or better than Mark Twain, Tennessee Williams, Hemingway, Hammett, Steinbeck...
He never uses apostrophes when writing dialect.
There were definitely laugh out loud funny parts. Though the book is tragic in many ways.
I think if JKT had lived, a good editor could have helped him make it a better book.
Two nitpicky things I saw:
1) He flashes back to our heroes childhood, 3 times and uses a different device each time. I got the impression there were bits of childhood he wanted to share but didn't know how.
2) When his characters use the same unique words over and over again it is funny. When the author does the same it is sloppy. Case in point, he always refers to Ignatius' hands as paws.
"Most curiously, there is the matter of what many, including Steven Soderbergh, believe to be a "curse" that surrounds the book. In addition to the tragic suicide of Toole, a series of misfortunes have affected efforts to make the film. In 1982, John Belushi became the first actor cast in the role of Ignatius (Richard Pryor was also attached to this version, in the role of the visionary vagrant Burma Jones). Belushi was an inspired choice, possessing both the artistic range and the physical largesse to nail the character. All the lights seemed to be turning green for Kramer, who was then only 23 years old. But a day or so before Belushi was supposed to meet with executives at Universal to finalize his involvement, he died of a drug overdose at the Chateau Marmont. Five months later, the woman who led the Louisiana State Film Commission was murdered by her husband, which brought the efforts to shoot the film in New Orleans???and the production itself???to a halt. Other deaths tangentially linked to the project include those of actors John Candy and Chris Farley, both of whom were considered for the lead role before they died. And, for those so predisposed, the recent devastation that Hurricane Katrina wrought on New Orleans provides further amplification."
http://www.slate.com/id/2155500/
Ive always pictured John Goodman for the role, but he recently slimmed down and seems a bit too old at this point.
As much as I'd like to believe that this would be great I can't help but suspect that, with it being in the middle of Pryor's heaviest crack use and with Belushi also coked up to his eyeballs, it would have been an incoherent mess. Still, nice to believe how great it could have been though if they were on form.
Have just finally got round to starting to read this today after having it on my to-read list for many years. So far enjoying it greatly and finding it very funny and looking forward to picking it up again on the train home tonight.
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We do not wish to be bothered in the future by such tedious complaints. Please confine your correspondence to orders only. We are busy and dynamic organization whose mission needless effrontery and harassment can only hinder.
If you molest us again, sir, you may feel the sting of the lash across your pitiful shoulders.
Yours in anger,
Gus Levy, Pres.
My thoughts exactly.
Now, I assume I'm too old to really enjoy either.
clearly not the same impact it had when i was 13 but a good quick read nonetheless
As to not having read this or "Cather in the Rye" - the latter is far more likely to be a required book. I've never heard of this book being taught. This is one novel that you have to want to read if you're going to be down.
If you want to know, the truth is, it is a good book for adults too.
Most "required" reading is... Moby Dick is the best novel I've ever read- frankly, probably always will be. Fortunately, for me, I was only required to read excerpts in high school. Then, the American Lit class that made me an English Major skipped Moby Dick. The professor said the following on the first day, looking over the syllabus:
"You might notice Moby Dick is missing. If we were going to read it, it would be the entire class. It is pretty much the height of American Literature. I encourage all of you to read it on your own."
I took his advice, and I thank god that I did... and that I wasn't colored by my experience in high school.
Moby Dick is an extraordinary novel though. When I first picked it up I was ready to be assaulted by a po faced epic yarn and was totally unprepared for just how darkly humorous it actually was.
Definitely one of the best. [chin scratch+mortar board] I fully concur with the words of your eminent professor [/chin scratch+mortar board]:
It sounds cliched, but "it's a trip", in the very best and most mind expanding ways, and also it still felt very fresh for it's age - a bit like The Wasteland. An excerpt from one of my favourite passages in Moby Dick:
There lay the fixed threads of the warp subject to but one single, ever returning, unchanging vibration, and that vibration merely enough to admit of the cross-wise interblending of other threads with it's own. This warp seemed necessity; and here, thought I, with my own hand I ply my own shuttle and weave my own destiny into these unalterable threads.
Words to live by and all that jazz.
I read Confederacy... and felt it was too long. Didn't live up to the hype for me - feels like the backstory has elevated the work.
Word. I read it on my subway commute one summer when I was around 22 of my own volition as part of a self-edification jag I was on. Didn't know what I was getting into, but it is what critics say of it and more. If anyone hasn't read it, I strongly urge you to make it your summer reading. Then we can make a Moby Dick thread and dudes can get all book report with it.
Waters could probably still do it justice without Divine. As for who the lead role would go to, fuck if I know.
Started reading it once a number of years ago and couldn't get into it. Put it down after 45 pages or so. Picked it back up about 5 years ago and was sorry it had to end.
I still haven't read Moby Dick. I guess I should.