![]() ![]() All the invention was at the service of a take-down of various types of revolution, sexual, economic, and domestic. The book’s impish satire spins an ironic variation on the Jonathan Swift quotation that inspired its title: “When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him.” That Reilly’s ‘genius’ stems from his anarchistic celebration of Boethius’ sixth-century Consolation of Philosophy suggests Toole’s affectionate but stinging condemnation of Southern madness, its adherence to an antiquated past generating grotesque forms of rebellion and obeisance. Idiosyncrasy reigned supreme, in terms of the novel’s language, playful narrative structure, and vivid descriptions of the French Quarter. I read the novel a couple of decades ago and remember the experience vividly-it was a rich, laugh out lampoon of American decadence, set in New Orleans during the early ‘60s with a flatulent, 30-year-old anti-hero named Ignatius J. ![]() Charles Erickson.Ĭhalk it up to grievous negligence of critical duty, but I didn’t have time to reread John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces before seeing Jeffrey Hatcher’s adaptation of the 1980 comic novel, which is now receiving a congenial production by the Huntington Theatre Company. ![]() Reilly in “A Confederacy of Dunces” at the Huntington Theatre Company. Stephanie DiMaggio as Myrna Minkoff and Nick Offerman as Ignatius J. ![]()
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