A Confederacy of Dunces is somewhat of an iconic book, mostly due the way it was published 11 years after the author’s death, when the late author’s mother submitted it to a publisher, who published it to no little acclaim. It was celebrated as the Great American Novel for which the publishing industry has waited in vain for the 20th Century and beyond, won the author a posthumous Pulitzer Prize for literature, and “is now considered a canonical work of modern literature of the Southern United States.”
While I do not consider it to be either a great work of literature or a very interesting novel, that’s not relevant here. What is of interest to me, and, as the quotes provided below will suffice to demonstrate, amply, is that the protagonist is, quite literally, one of the biggest Gammas ever written.
Consider the following examples of a particular behavioral pattern by Ignatius J. Reilly, who is described as “an educated but slothful 30-year-old man living with his mother in the Uptown neighborhood of early-1960s New Orleans”.
"Will you kindly tend the bar properly? Ignatius asked furiously. "It is your duty to silently serve when we call upon you. If we had wished to include you in our conversation, we would have indicated it by now. As a matter of fact, we are discussing rather urgent personal matters."
"Ignatius graduated from college. Then he stuck around there for four more years to get him a master's degree. Ignatius graduated smart."
" 'Graduated smart,' " Ignatius repeated with some pique. "Please define your terms. Exactly what do you mean by 'graduated smart.' "
Looking at the dozens of Big Chief tablets that made a rug of Indian headdresses around the bed, Ignatius thought smugly that on their yellowed pages and wide-ruled lines were the seeds of a magnificent study in comparative history. Very disordered, of course. But one day he would assume the task of editing these fragments of his mentality into a jigsaw puzzle of a very grand design; the completed puzzle would show literate men the disaster course that history had been taking for the past four centuries. In the five years that he had dedicated to this work, he had produced an average of only six paragraphs monthly. He could not even remember what he had written in some of the tablets, and he realized that several were filled principally with doodling. However, Ignatius thought calmly, Rome was not built in a day.
"Employers sense in me a denial of their values." He rolled over onto his back. "They fear me. I suspect that they can see that I am forced to function in a century which I loathe. That was true even when I worked for the New Orleans Public Library."
"But, Ignatius, that was the only time you worked since you got out of college, and you was only there for two weeks."
"That is exactly what I mean," Ignatius replied, aiming a paper ball at the bowl of the milk glass chandelier.
"All you did was paste them little slips in the books."
"Yes, but I had my own esthetic about pasting those slips. On some days I could only paste in three or four slips and at the same time feel satisfied with the quality of my work. The library authorities resented my integrity about the whole thing. They only wanted another animal who could slop glue on their best sellers."
“That office was improperly heated. I don't know how the employees of that company manage to stay alive exposing themselves to that chill day after day. And then there are those fluorescent tubes baking their brains out and blinding them. I did not like the office at all. I tried to explain the inadequacies of the place to the personnel manager, but he seemed rather uninterested. He was ultimately very hostile."
There really isn’t any room for debate about Ignatius J. Reilly being a quintessential Gamma. But what about the author, John Kennedy Toole? Was he simply writing what he knew or was he, like Homer, merely a gifted observer offering a portrayal of the human condition?
That’s a question for another day. But literature is only one of the ways to effectively demonstrate that the Socio-Sexual Hierarchy has been around and observable long before it was identified and articulated.
I read a (the?) biography of JK O'Toole, and my impression was that for most of his life he was an affable person and a basic Delta in terms of SSH. He seems to have suffered from severe depression and other mental illnesses in his final years, and was a completely different and much reduced man.
As far as Confederacy goes, it's all about the humor, which is always subjective. If it works for you, it's one of America's great comic novels. If it doesn't, it's a dreary story about marginal people in a fading city. It's a very Southern book with a very Southern sense of humor.
I would say that if you like comedic literature, you should definitely give it a shot. If at the end of the movie theater scene, it's still not working for you, then don't bother, but it would be a shame to miss the book if you turned out to like it.
If you ever get a chance to see Nick Offerman play the role, it is a treat. A skin crawling treat as he NAILS the role, but it is still impressive. You can find clips of the stage show on YouTube.