Line #16 YMMV/AConfederacyOfDunces


1	* AluminumChristmasTrees:
2	** Darlene's stripped-by-a-bird act was not invented for this book. A burlesque performer named Yvette Dare famously used a trained parrot to accomplish this in real life.
3	** Dr. Nut is not a BlandNameProduct of Dr. Pepper but an actual discontinued soda that was popular in New Orleans at the time, with a completely different flavor similar to amaretto.
4	* FairForItsDay: Dorian and Burma can come across as somewhat bigoted caricatures to modern readers. But Burma is sympathetically portrayed as a victim of PoliceBrutality and Dorian is never portrayed as a villain. Helped by the fact that ''everyone'' in the story is caricatured and exaggerated to some extent, so their portrayals don't necessarily stand out over anyone else's.
5	* GeniusBonus:
6	** Hroswitha, whom Ignatius name-checks a couple of times, was an actual person -- a medieval nun and playwright whose works are mostly about chaste, pious women frustrating the schemes of lascivious men.
7	** Ignatius is named after Ignatius of Loyola, one of the founders of the Jesuits and one of the principal figures of the Counter-Reformation. Fitting for a man so reactionary, he believes the world ought to return to pre-Renaissance feudalism.
8	* HilariousInHindsight: Despite being written in the 1960s, Reilly is a dead ringer for a follower of the 21st century [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Enlightenment Dark Enlightenment / Neoreactionary]] movement. Fittingly, the Rational Wiki [[http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Neoreactionary_movement article]] for the movement contains several quotes from the book!
9	** Ignatius is the original [[BasementDweller neckbeard]] way before the term was coined.
10	* HypeBacklash: This is a very polarizing book. If you check out its listing on Goodreads, you'll see nearly as many negative reviews as positive. Common complaints include the meandering plot, the unlikeable characters, and [[spoiler: Ignatius's KarmaHoudini ending]]. As one reviewer puts it, "This is the book that almost broke my book club."
11	* IronWoobie:
12	** Mancuso. No matter what is thrown at him, he doesn't back down. [[spoiler: Fortunately, it works out for him in the end.]]
13	** Burma. The dude is harassed by police and made to work for a greedy, abusive boss. Yet he deals with these problems with surprising equanimity, [[spoiler: and, through Ignatius, he is able to deal with both of these problems at once]].
14	** Gus Levy. The guy had to deal with a nagging wife who puts him down constantly, and [[spoiler: his father was a stubborn idiot who refused any of his recommendations]]. Subtly, he is so idle because he simply doesn't care anymore. [[spoiler: Ignatius's letter, however, helps him regain interest in his company again.]]
15	* JerkassWoobie: Reilly is perhaps the prime example of a non-functional human being in modern society, but he doesn't deserve ''all'' of the bad stuff that happens to him. Indeed, the more naïve reader might at first mistake him for just another "sensitive" young [[TheSixties Sixties]] activist - one who's a bit strident but definitely well-intentioned. However, this characterization is undercut by the fact that Ignatius is only getting involved in social causes to stick it to his holier-than-thou girlfriend.
16	* OneTruePairing: Myrna and Ignatius are pretty much destined to get together from the get-go.
17	* {{Squick}}:
18	** Anyone who stands still long enough will get a lecture on Ignatius's valve. When it closes, he tends to fart and belch a lot.
19	** On the subject of releases, Ignatius masturbates constantly for a puritanical figure, and what little is described is ''very'' unpleasant; he mentions having experimented with tools -- rubber gloves, silk, Noxema -- when he was a teenager but now just does it rotely out of boredom. [[spoiler: His preferred ritual leading up to climax is not thinking of a woman or a man but remembering himself playing with his beloved dead Collie Rex, an act that is either outright bestial or very depressing (as he's trying to revisit the last time he was truly happy).]]
20	*** When Ignatius produces the homemade banner to be used for the "Crusade for Moorish Dignity" protest, it's revealed that he used his own white bedsheet, and that there are unwashed -- or worse, ''indelible'' -- yellow piss and semen stains on it. The would-be protesters are repulsed.
21	---->"I wonder who been sleepin on that old thing," the intense woman with the spiritual bent, who was to be the leader of the choir, said. "Lord!"\
22	Several other prospective rioters expressed the same curiosity in more explicitly physical terminology.\
23	"Quiet now," Ignatius said, stomping one foot thunderously on the table. "Please! Two of the more statuesque women here will carry this banner between them as we march into the office."\
24	"I ain puttin my hand on that," one woman answered.
25	* TooBleakStoppedCaring: This is a very common issue for people to take with the book; if you don't like reading comedy about [[WorldOfJerkass a world populated by terrible people with no clear person to root for]] and don't like it when [[KarmaHoudini awful characters get off scot-free with their crimes]], you should probably give it a pass.
26	* ValuesDissonance: As this was written at the height of the UsefulNotes/ColdWar, there is obviously a little bit of this.
27	** In the end, [[spoiler: Lana Lee is arrested for distributing pornography to minors, which is treated as her just desserts. She deserved punishment, but not just for that.]]
28	** Toole paints his characters in very BroadStrokes, mining New Orleans stereotypes to their fullest in a way that would be considered insensitive today. Burma is a pot-smoking, sunglasses-wearing, JiveTurkey-spouting black man. Dorian Greene and his retinue of CampGay men and ButchLesbian women are also examples. However, Toole is going for RuleOfFunny rather than putting anyone down, and Burma and Dorian are hardly the only exaggerated caricatures in the book.
29	* ValuesResonance:
30	** In the beginning, Ignatius goes into a rant on how corrupt New Orleans has become, listing off all the vices and crimes going on there. Among things like drug addicts, prostitutes, and gamblers, he lists "sodomites" and lesbians. Of course, arch-conservative that he is (or thinks he is), he would probably say the same thing today. Part of this is because Ignatius is ''supposed'' to be an UnsympatheticComedyProtagonist who thinks civilization took a wrong turn at the Renaissance, so having his views become slightly more out of date doesn't really change his characterization at all.
31	** Burma Jones's experiences with racism as a black man in 1960s Louisiana are pretty relevant in the present. Not just the blatant discrimination he suffers from the police and in the workplace but the casual racism he faces from the more sympathetic white characters. Ignatius's sham rally of Levy Pants's black workforce shows how social justice movements can be ineffective and/or manipulated for selfish reasons.

Context YMMV / AConfederacyOfDunces