Book Club - Confederacy of Dunces

We will discuss the book Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole.
Plan on covering the first 4 chapters of the book.

A Confederacy of Dunces is a picaresque novel by American novelist John Kennedy Toole. It was published in 1980, eleven years after Toole's death. Published through the efforts of writer Walker Percy (who also contributed a foreword) and Toole's mother, Thelma, 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.
The book's title refers to an epigram 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."
A Confederacy of Dunces follows the misadventures of its protagonist, Ignatius J. Reilly, a lazy, overweight, misanthropic, self-styled scholar who lives at home with his mother. He is an educated but slothful 30-year-old man living 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. It is hailed for its accurate depictions of New Orleans dialects. Toole based Reilly in part on his college professor friend Bob Byrne. Byrne's slovenly, eccentric behavior was anything but professorial, and Reilly mirrored him in these respects. The character was also based on Toole himself, and several personal experiences served as inspiration for passages in the novel. While at Tulane, Toole filled in for a friend at a job as a hot tamale cart vendor, and worked at a family owned and operated clothing factory. Both of these experiences were later adopted into his fiction.

Disclaimer: This meetup is not limited to members of the Bluegrass Developers Guild. You don't need to be a developer to join either, just a love of books. All are welcome.

We meet every other Tuesday at 6:00 pm. There is a core of 5-6 people who attend regularly. This event at the tables just outside the Darling Wine Bar in the Greyline facility
(101 W Loudon Ave Ste 164 Lexington, Kentucky 40508)
Feel free to message on the event if you have trouble finding us. Parking is free in the parking lot.