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THE Confederacy of Dunces

When the world is born a true genius
can identificarsele by this sign:

fools all conspire against him.

The Confederacy of Dunces (A Confederacy of Dunces, in English) is a novel John Kennedy Toole published posthumously awarded the Pulitzer 1981 .

The title is a reference to a quote from one of the classic satire, Jonathan Swift : "When a true genius appears in the world will recognize him by this sign: all conspire against him stupid."

Written to 1962 , while doing military service in Puerto Rico , narrates the adventures of Ignatius J. Reilly , an eccentric character for work to pay off debt while embarking on a series of bizarre adventures in order to compete with her friend Myrna Minkoff in the field of social unrest.

John Kennedy Toole never saw his work published in his lifetime. Apparently, he sent the original novel to several publishers, and all refused. In one, the Simon and Schuster , it seems that at first excited by the book, but finally refused saying something downright ridiculous: it was a book that was not anything in particular . A short time later, he decided to commit suicide.

His mother, finding the manuscript years later, led to different publishers, which also again rejected. Committed to its publication, since he thought the novel had a remarkable quality, made contact with the writer Walker Percy (author among others of the novel The movie buff, with which he had considerable success) to read the novel and got published. Percy, as he himself tells in the prologue of The Confederacy of Dunces, at first wary of reading the text offered. But when, after much insistence agreed to read it, was wonder: did not seem possible that the novel was so good. The novel received the Pulitzer Prize , and was a bestseller, appearing on bestseller lists in many countries, making it one of the few cases in which they combine quality literary and commercial success.

Above all, the novel is a brilliant and funny satire of contemporary society. It focuses on portraying the society of New Orleans in the sixties, but goes much further, and manages to recreate a vivid fresco of our time enormous constructive criticism of our world, with all their ridiculous and absurd pettiness.

The central character, Ignatius J. Reilly , is a misfit, an anachronism who dreams of the medieval lifestyle, and morale, again rule the world. To do this, to be heard in a world that is misunderstood, filled with his handwritten notebooks hundreds of Big Boss, in which shapes his world view, and scatters these texts for your room. Order one day and meet creating his masterpiece. Meanwhile the goddess Fortuna, against will catapult him to the capitalist world, was forced to submit to the new form of slavery that it is work. He resigned as Boethius resigned to his execution and goes to look for work. Their work and life is the thread that unites and gives meaning to all the work, and allows us to meet other characters as recognizable as human, as memorable.

Far from mere anecdotes, hilarious and endearing character of Ignatius is generating special about him, the novel transcends it to become, in its background, in a ruthless portrait of mankind. A picture full of pity and understanding, while bitterness and resignation. As Percy says in the preface, despite the laughter that provided the novel after reading it also felt a certain sadness that did not quite know where it came from, if the dramatic backdrop of the novel, or the tragedy of the author , who committed suicide just over thirty years without getting to see his novel published, and with his death denied us cool new books as it could have been the continuation of this novel, clearly left open doors with the evocative, melodic , end that the book holds . Ego Sum

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