A Confederacy of Dunces

A Confederacy of Dunces is a picaresque novel by American novelist John Kennedy Toole which reached publication in 1980, eleven years after Toole's death. Published through the efforts of writer Walker Percy (who contributed a foreword) and Toole's mother, Thelma, the book became first a cult classic, then a mainstream success; it earned Toole a posthumous Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1981 and is now a canonical work of modern literature of the Southern United States.The book's title refers to an epigram from Jonathan Swift's essay Thoughts on Various Subjects, Moral and Diverting: "When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him." Dunces is a picaresque novel featuring the misadventures of protagonist Ignatius J. Reilly, a lazy, obese, misanthropic, self-styled scholar. He is an educated but slothful 30-year-old living with his mother in the Uptown neighborhood of early-1960s New Orleans. In his quest for employment, he has adventures with colorful French Quarter characters. Toole wrote the first draft in 1963 during his last few months in Puerto Rico. Critics liked the accurate depictions of New Orleans dialects. Toole based Reilly in part on his professor friend Bob Byrne. Byrne's slovenly, eccentric behavior was anything but professorial. Reilly resembled Toole; Toole's experiences served as inspiration for episodes. While at Tulane, Toole filled in for a friend as a hot-tamale cart vendor and worked for a family that owned and operated a clothing factory.