Five Stars

"When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him."
Johnathan Swift-Thoughts on Various Subjects, Moral and Diverting



(I originall published this Review on October 18, 2008 but have recently re-read this book, and feel it bares a second look. I move it to the forefront for those who have not been with Enchanted since the beginning)






In March of 1969, a simple man with a touch of lunacy and genius had had enough. On an isolated road outside Biloxi, Mississippi, he connected a garden hose to the exhaust pipe of his car, put the other end into the window, and slowly faded out of this paralelle and into another. *

John Kennedy Toole scribed A Confederacy of Dunces which was published posthumously in 1980. It won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, and was the second of only two books ever written by him. **

A Confederacy of Dunces is a commedia, but anyone who reads it, anyone with even the slightest glimpse of this author’s life will see the words for what they are: turmoil distracted by the very thoughts of the author himself.

Ignatius Reilly, the main character in this book, in my opinion, is the mirror of his creator: an intelligent, misunderstood, pathetic and creative human.

This is a tragicomedy that will not soon leave your thoughts and will imbed itself in your bones. You will read it more than once. You won’t have a choice.

* the death of John Kennedy Toole

** John Kennedy Toole’s first book, The Neon Bible, was written when he was 16. It was published in 1989. Another masterpiece to be devoured.

1937-1969