A Confederacy of Dunces is a picaresque novel by American novelist John Kennedy Toole which appeared in 1980, eleven years after Toole's suicide. Published through the efforts of writer Walker Percy (who also contributed a foreword) and Toole's mother, 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 considered a canonical work of modern literature of the Southern United States.[1]
The book's title refers to an epigraph 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." Its central character, Ignatius J. Reilly, is an educated, but slothful 30-year-old man living with his mother in the Uptown neighborhood of early-1960s New Orleans who, in his quest for employment, has various adventures with colorful French Quarter characters. Toole wrote the novel in 1963 during his last few months in Puerto Rico.
>>> THAT'S RIGHT, FOLKS: My water-in-lungs, then revealed arrhythmia and a fast-beating heart, has now all mended itself (to all appearances and medical tests), and my PYLORIC VALVE (or quite similar), is the problem -- just like with Ignatius J. Reilly!!!
>>> AND THE REASON MY READERS HAVE HAD A WELCOME BREAK, is that my blood pressure is normally at the low point of acceptable, so to lower it for the arrhythmia and speeded-up beat, caused me to sleep 14 hours a day and have no energy to write. But after the lungs and heart were healed, it caused me to have false panic attacks of needing to hyperventilate, and that was somehow caused by my stomach, which means that NOW, I am on "Eating Pills" just like Tennessee Williams was, but different ones. He had chronic pancreatitis, so took Donnatal (a belladonna alkaloid), and Cotazym (the ground up, desiccated pancreas of a hog), and my MOST IMPORTANT DUTY was to always have the two drugs on hand at any time he decided to eat -- and I never missed even once!!!
>>> I DID CALL MY MAMA TODAY . . .
Mom at the last Meyer Family Reunion (2009) -- or the last one anyone told ME about, anyway.
1. Something I have wanted to do since I posted this: http://theweathercontinues.blogspot.mx/2014/06/without-apologizing-i-thank-my-sister.html which is really a continuation of this: http://theweathercontinues.blogspot.mx/2014/06/communication-with-my-sister-julie-and.html.
2. I explained to Mom that there was NO WAY I could mess with Julie's family's income -- and I'm empathetic to her situation, anyway, but most importantly, she, Mom, had listened to me for the FIRST TIME IN MY LIFE, and I did and do not need her or anyone else's agreement or apology -- just the opportunity to be understood.
I explained that as far as I am concerned, all the mess with family (and Cape May people, too), is now water-over-the-dam, and I have important LEGAL things to turn my attention to in Chicago, Wilmington, North Carolina, and Dekalb County, Georgia.
And regardless what ANYONE thinks of my mental health, I have endured more than four years of INCREDIBLE BULL SHIT, and am still doing just fine -- with NONE of the many doctors I've seen lately -- or on my own in Wilmington -- thinking I have a mental illness at all.
AGAIN, Mom GOT IT, and sincerely wished me luck.
Scott
Currently, my brain is NOT healthy, so everyone is being spared for a few days!!!
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