Marieke: Oh, it takes ‘star power’ to bring it on the show, I know how it works! Jennifer: Well Augusten asked to bring this book along and Marieke has been begging to bring it since, oh, the late 19th Century. Now to our second book, which Chris Taylor, claimed last month, contained the best fart jokes in literature – big call! Here’s John Kennedy Toole’s, A Confederacy of Dunces. Panellists: Jennifer Byrne, Augusten Burroughs, Germaine Greer, Jason Steger, Marieke Hardy ' Here at any rate is Ignatius Reilly, without progenitor in any literature I know of - slob extraordinary, a mad Oliver Hardy, a fat Don Quixote, a perverse Thomas Aquinas rolled into one - who is in violent revolt against the entire modern age.' Walker Percy The book won the prestigious Pulitzer Prize in 1981. The author never saw his work become a cult classic, or witness it soar to the top of best-seller charts. After novelist Walker Percy read it, he encouraged Louisiana State University Press to publish the novel which they did in 1980. His mother spent years taking the manuscript around to publishers. Tragically, in 1969 and at the age of 32, he committed suicide. John Kennedy Toole wrote A Confederacy of Dunces throughout the 1960s but was unable to have it accepted for publication. Living at home with his mother, his misanthropic sloth-like existence is compromised when Ignatius is forced into finding work, with unsuccessful yet comic results. On occasion, when he does leave his bed, people on the street are confronted with his ridiculing rhetoric - crusading against vice, modernity and ignorance. Loud and obese, Ignatius spends most of his time lying in bed, eating, masturbating and writing in his notebooks. Set in New Orleans, Ignatius is 30 years-old, a self-proclaimed genius, expert in medieval history and prone to delusions, gluttony and flatulence. 'Full, pursed lips protruded beneath the bushy black moustache and, at their corners, sank into little folds filled with disapproval and potato chip crumbs.'

Reilly - 'who may very well the most disgusting lead character ever in a novel'.

This posthumous release became a modern American classic and introduced one of the most memorable characters in comic literature - antihero Ignatius J. If you have a moment, I shall endeavor to discuss the crime problem with you, but don’t make the mistake of bothering me.' 'This city is famous for its gamblers, prostitutes, exhibitionists, anti-Christs, alcoholics, sodomites, drug addicts, fetishists, onanists, pornographers, frauds, jades, litterbugs and lesbians.

A confederacy of dunces book review