Early this year, I finally finished reading Anna Karenina and was feeling very gloomy. I also found myself much more aware and alert when I was at train stations. I read the book at the perfect time, since the dreary, dismal outlook of the book matched the ugly February weather. I don’t want to give anything away to anyone that hasn’t conquered Karenina yet, but it’s not a feel-good story. I needed to bring my spirits up after traveling through the dark, ominous, Russian countryside for over a month. For many years, my mom told me that I should read A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole. I had never heard of the book before and was still severely engrossed in my depressing, Russian classics. I was planning on re-reading Crime and Punishment after finishing Anna Karenina. But my mom, in her Hail Mary attempt to get me to finally read her recommendation and bring me out of my depressing Russian phase, bought the book for me and sent it to my Kindle. So I read it.
I went into the book with no expectations. I asked my mom what the book was about, and she said that she couldn’t really explain it. She told me it was funny and that I would enjoy it. I was skeptical. I was still in school studying depressing literature and was not really exposing myself to comedic books. My book-radar was shut off from that genre, thinking it was low-brow or somehow inferior to what I was reading for class. But, what was I going to do? It was already on the home page of my Kindle, taunting me. I started reading the book cautiously but openly. And I finished it in about three days. It’s not that it was a short book or an easy read. I just couldn’t put it down.
What caught my comedic interest was the absurdity of the story. The title of this blog post, for example, is a quote from the novel. The protagonist/antagonist/focal point of the novel is named Ignatius Riley, an overweight, thirty-year-old man who lives with his mother in New Orleans. Sounds like a real catch, right? Ignatius has a warped sense of reality, and eventually spreads his warped reality to anyone that encounters him. My mom was right: this book is really hard to explain, but it does involve pirates, pornography, burlesque dancers and their birds, hats with flaps, and medieval philosophy. What more does a book really need?
Digression: While I was refreshing my memory about the book for this blog post, I stumbled upon “The Confederacy of Dunces Curse.” A curse?! I needed to know more. I found out that the author of the book, John Kennedy Toole, had committed suicide at the age of thirty-one. After the book was published, it was shopped around to film makers and studios to make into a movie…and here’s where it gets creepy. John Belushi was first chosen to portray Ignatius, but Belushi’s premature death halted production of this adaptation. The next in line to play Ignatius was John Candy, who also died at a young age and delayed the film even further. Next up was Chris Farley. Are you noticing a pattern?! How weird!
There are still rumors around Hollywood that there will be a movie made of this book, and some names that have been mentioned are Will Ferrell, Jack Black and Zach Galifianakis. For their sakes, I hope this movie is never made. Even though it would be so great. (If you want to read more about the catastrophes and deaths surrounding the production of this movie, check out this link: http://splitsider.com/2013/03/8-actors-who-came-close-to-starring-in-a-confederacy-of-dunces/)
-There’s Always Money in the Beaunana Stand
Tags: anna karenina, comedy, confederacy of dunces, movies