Review: A Confederacy of Dunces The World’s Worst Review
March 12th, 2010 by Jordan
A Confederacy of Dunces
John Kennedy Toole
Published: 1981
Pages: 444
The rise of the internet has had a profound effect on the collective subconscious of our society. These days, we have unprecedented access to a near limitless fount of information and entertainment. And although it has become a somewhat hackneyed expression, the world is quite literally at our fingertips.
But with every blessing comes a curse. The internet is no exception. Along with information and entertainment, we are constantly bombarded by huge amounts of junk data – the result of which is that we have all become increasingly discerning media consumers. We have become smarter, more savvy – but also far more predisposed to boredom.
Perhaps the truest and most telling result of this paradigm shift is the decline of the feature article. Old media’s poster-boy has been all but relegated to subscription-based niche publications – which I imagine are read exclusively by people who wear scarves. But if you haven’t consumed a blueberry bagel in the past twenty-four hours, there’s a fair chance you know what I mean. There is simply no place in today’s fast-paced mediascape for the lengthy diatribes of yore - and as a result, both the feature article and the institutions which traditionally bore them are fading into the ether.
But from the ashes of the old rises the new, and it appears that the web has caused the rise of a new journalistic model – one that favours the frivolous, the whimsical, the superficial and the downright banal.
Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the primary vehicle of our current journalistic revolution: the top-ten list.
Borne on the back of the inexorable rise of the blog (but certainly not confined to the amateurish philanderings of the web’s countless, faceless content producers) the top ten list provides an excellent avenue for a writer to quickly and easily present information which may otherwise be too lengthy or complex for the average media consumer. Better yet, the top-ten list caters for the participatory nature of new media – providing one of the readiest ways of fostering an ongoing discussion amongst readers.
My search for quality reading material has taken me from one side of the interwebs to the other. And on my never-ending quest, I’ve stumbled across countless top-ten lists. And while these lists have been as varied and eclectic as the people who put them together, it seems that certain trends exist.
What books people like and identify with can tell you reams about an individual’s character – providing yet another reason why I think that people produce so many damn top-ten lists. Quite simply, they provide an affirmation of the individual through their choice in material possessions. Which, for the record, I am by no means condemning. I personally love the idea of owning a library that is as much a talking point as it is a necessity.
I, for example, would state that my favourite book of all time is almost certainly Catch-22. An entirely unsurprising choice? Perhaps. A testament to my literary naiveté? Probably. But should that detract from the unbridled brilliance that is Catch-22? Definitely not.
Affirmation is certainly what I found while reading this book. The book really resounded with me, feeling as if Mr. Heller penned it exclusively with me in mind. Hence why I’m so attached to the novel. But as it turns out, I’m not alone in rating Heller’s novel as somewhat of a literary masterpiece. A quick trawl of the internet reveals that a great many other people (albeit mostly males) consider Catch-22 as one of their favourite books.
While it seems that there is some unwritten rule that men traditionally like Catch-22, similar patterns exist for women, too - especially when it comes to Jane Austen, who similarly seems to enjoy near-universal popularity.
But the point of this long and meandering introduction is this; in most lists in which people claim to have enjoyed Catch-22 usually feature another comic novel – one that had managed to elude me up until several months ago. The novel I am referring to is none other than John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces – a book that won the 1981 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the hearts and minds of millions.
Hailed as the one of the funniest novels ever written, I had high expectations for this novel.
Unfortunately, A Confederacy of Dunces isn’t nearly as funny, clever or well-written as Catch-22.
I give it three thinly-veiled poop jokes out of five.


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