Freewheeling Andy
5th July 2006, 22:26
What exactly makes a "cult classic" into a cult classic? Is it that it treats obscure subjects? Is it that it offers an insight for those normally on the sidelines of society? Or is it that it's just not very good?
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole came in with spectacular recommendations from all kinds of sources (online dating women I didn't date, the blokes in Waterstones on Gower Street, old friends, newspapers), yet it didn't live up to the hype. Perhaps the joy of something like this is discovering it for yourself and discovering it's better than you were expecting. My expectations were perhaps too high.
It's not a bad book. Interesting, fascinating in places.
Ignatius J Reilly is the main protagonist, and in a cast full of horrors, such as the incompetent effete policeman who is forced to work in fancy dress, or Miss Trixie the decrepit, senile office assistant. Ignatius, though, is huge, fat, lazy, greedy, creates his own ailments, hates the modern world, and hides behind his mother. The book is, in most basic terms, how he is forced out into the world to work, and the destruction and havoc he wreaks as he continues his tirade against 20th century New Orleans and its vices.
The characters are big, the satire is strong, the comedy is there, but there was something soulless about the book to me, perhaps all the characters being slightly hateful.
The funny thing is that I think about what I've just written and it seems so negative. But I don't want to put people off reading the book, now I come to think about it. It's too interesting, and too different, to do that.
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole came in with spectacular recommendations from all kinds of sources (online dating women I didn't date, the blokes in Waterstones on Gower Street, old friends, newspapers), yet it didn't live up to the hype. Perhaps the joy of something like this is discovering it for yourself and discovering it's better than you were expecting. My expectations were perhaps too high.
It's not a bad book. Interesting, fascinating in places.
Ignatius J Reilly is the main protagonist, and in a cast full of horrors, such as the incompetent effete policeman who is forced to work in fancy dress, or Miss Trixie the decrepit, senile office assistant. Ignatius, though, is huge, fat, lazy, greedy, creates his own ailments, hates the modern world, and hides behind his mother. The book is, in most basic terms, how he is forced out into the world to work, and the destruction and havoc he wreaks as he continues his tirade against 20th century New Orleans and its vices.
The characters are big, the satire is strong, the comedy is there, but there was something soulless about the book to me, perhaps all the characters being slightly hateful.
The funny thing is that I think about what I've just written and it seems so negative. But I don't want to put people off reading the book, now I come to think about it. It's too interesting, and too different, to do that.