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S'està carregant… Una Concorxa d'enzes (1980)de John Kennedy Toole
  
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 djlinick | Jan 15, 2022 |  If I could give this twice as many stars, I would. The greatest novel ever written. (  ) dlbkcmo | Dec 8, 2021 | Interesting, but dated (  ) dualmon | Nov 17, 2021 | "A masterwork . . . the novel astonishes with its inventiveness . . . it is nothing less than a grand comic fugue."--The New York Times Book Review A Confederacy of Dunces is an American comic masterpiece. John Kennedy Toole's hero, one Ignatius J. Reilly, is huge, obese, fractious, fastidious, a latter-day Gargantua, a Don Quixote of the French Quarter. His story bursts with wholly original characters, denizens of New Orleans' lower depths, incredibly true-to-life dialogue, and the zaniest series of high and low comic adventures (Henry Kisor, Chicago Sun-Times). DavidRussell65 | Oct 30, 2021 | God this book was singularly distasteful; If I were it's author I'd probably kill myself. (  ) Adam_Gugliciello | Oct 26, 2021 |
 A pungent work of slapstick, satire and intellectual incongruities - yet flawed in places by its very virtues. Ultimately, Ignatius is simply too grotesque and loony to be taken for a genius; the world he howls at seems less awful than he does. Pratfalls can pass beyond slapstick only if they echo, and most of the ones in this novel do not. They are terribly funny, though, and if a book's price is measured against the laughs it provokes, A Confederacy of Dunces is the bargain of the year.  This is the kind of book one wants to keep quoting from. I could, with keen pleasure, copy all of Jones's dialogue out and then get down to the other characters. Apart from being a fine funny novel (but also comic in the wider sense, like Gargantua or Ulysses), this is a classic compendium of Louisiana speech. What evidently fascinated Toole (a genuine scholar, MA Columbia and so on) about his own town was something that A.J. Liebling noted in his The Earl of Louisiana: the existence of a New Orleans city accent close to the old Al Smith tonality, 'extinct in Manhattan', living alongside a plantation dialect which cried out for accurate recording. El protagonista de esta novela es uno de los personajes más memorables de la literatura norteamericana: Ignatus Reilly -una mezcla de Oliver Hardy delirante, Don Quijote adiposo y santo Tomás de Aquino, perverso, reunidos en una persona-, que a los treinta años aún vive con su estrafalaria madre, ocupado en escribir una extensa y demoledora denuncia contra nuestro siglo, tan carente de teología y geometría como de decencia y buen gusto, un alegado desquiciado contra una sociedad desquiciada. Por una inesperada necesidad de dinero, se ve 'catapultado en la fiebre de la existencia contemporánea', embarcándose en empleos y empresas de lo más disparatado. Ruggero Bianchi Tuttolibri settembre 1998 Il caso di Una banda di idioti di John Kennedy Toole ricorda sorprendentemente, per molti versi, quello di Il giovane Holden di J.D. Salinger. Opere, entrambe, di autori (quasi) esordienti e comunque alla loro prima esperienza nel campo della narrativa lunga. E scritte, entrambe, da artisti irrequieti e verosimilmente nevrotici, non disposti a campare sulla sinecura del loro primo successo. Conosciamo tutti, di Salinger, la scelta di centellinare i propri scritti e di difendere la sua scelta esistenziale, una sorte di coleridgiana morte-in-vita. Ma pochi sanno della fine di Toole, nato nel 1937 e suicidatosi nel 1969, a soli trentadue anni, lasciando alla madre il compito di trasformare in bestseller e in classico moderno un libro che forse non pensava di poter mai pubblicare e che, negli Stati Uniti, uscì grazie soltanto al parere autorevole (sebbene segretamente perplesso) del celebre critico Walter Percy, che firma anche l’introduzione all’edizione italiana.Ma le analogie non si fermano qui. Sia Il govane Holden che Una banda di idioti pongono, fin dal titolo, grossi problemi alla bravura dei traduttori. Il primo alludendo, con la dizione originale di The Catcher in the Rye, alle figure del baseball e alle coltivazioni del mais; il secondo chiamando in causa, sotto la formula di A Confederacy of Duncies, la realtà di un Sud "confederato" nella guerra civile e l’indimenticato poema di Alexander Pope, The Dunciad (1728), un capolavoro satirico inglese del primo Settecento che nessuno oggi legge come nessuno oggi legge il Parini e, probabilmente, per le stesse ragioni. Come se non bastasse, ai due romanzi è toccata di fatto la medesima sorte in Italia. The Catcher in the Rye di Salinger, uscito nel 1952 nel nostro Paese con il titolo Vita da uomo (Casini editore, traduzione di Jacopo Darca), divenne un bestseller grazie alla nuova edizione di Einaudi del 1961 (trad. di A. Motti). A Confederacy of Duncies passò inosservato dal pubblico una quindicina d’anni fa, sebbene Luciana Bianciardi vincesse, per la sua traduzione oggi ripubblicata in altra cornice, il Premio Monselice 1983. Pertany a aquestes col·leccions editorials
El protagonista d?aquesta novel?la és un dels personatges més memorables de la literatura nord-americana: l?Ignatius J. Reilly ?un còctel d?Oliver Hardy delirant, Quixot adipós i Tomàs d?Aquino pervers?, que amb trenta anys encara viu amb la seva estrafolària mare mentre escriu una denúncia demolidora contra el segle XX, tan mancat de «teologia i geometria» com de «gust i decència»; un al?legat trastornat contra una societat trastornada. A causa d?una inesperada necessitat de diners, es veu catapultat «al mig del desori de l?existència contemporània» i embarcat en feines d?allò més absurdes. Els personatges secundaris són tan exòtics (i neuròtics) com els d?una pel?lícula dels germans Marx: la Darlene, la ballarina d?estriptis que prepara un número amb una cacatua; en Jones, el primmirat porter negre del Night of Joy, regentat per la rapaç Lana Lee, que complementa els seus ingressos com a model de fotos porno; l?agent Mancuso, el policia més incompetent de Nova Orleans; la Myrna Minkoff, la catastròfica estudiant contestatària; la senyoreta Trixie, l?octogenària enfurida perquè no la jubilen... Una confabulació d?imbècils, que presentem traduïda de nou al català per Xavier Pàmies, és l?obra mestra pòstuma de John Kennedy Toole, reconegut unànimement com un autor imprescindible en la tradició de Cervantes, Fielding, Swift, Rabelais i Dickens. No s'han trobat descripcions de biblioteca. |
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 Google Books — S'està carregant…GèneresClassificació Decimal de Dewey (DDC)813.54 — Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999LCC (Clas. Bibl. Congrés EUA)ValoracióMitjana: (3.95)
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@ pg 53. I have never so thoroughly loathed the protagonist (assuming one can even call Ignatius J. Reilly anything CLOSE to that) of a book so much and so quickly as in this book. Already one can see Toole's scathing criticism of education for its sake, those who consume much yet produce little to nothing, those who have a critical comment about anything and everything, and the hyper-extension of adolescence in the modern era. It is amazing how the smartest character in the book can be the dumbest character at the same time. I cannot WAIT to see where Toole takes the story from here.
@ pg 82. Ignatius is somehow employed! His lady penpal is the first person in this whole novel to truly call him on his bull. Unsurprisingly, he doesn't believe a word she's written.
@pg 104. Mrs. Reilly seems to be working on declaring a nonverbal independence from her son in the closing scene of Ch 4. Ignatius sees this, and I don't think he's going to like it! Iggy is working on a journal of his time "working" and mentions therein a concern for correcting social injustices. I guess we can add SJW to the list of things ridiculed in this novel; time will tell if that proves right.
@pg 116. As soon as Iggy starts earning for the household fund, NOW he's concerned about the expenses of the house, specifically what his mother purchases, even though SHE has been subsidizing his existence AS AN ADULT for years!
@pg 145. Iggy incites an abortive race riot at work, losing his job. The second he gets home, mama puts her foot down and tells him he's hitting the road tomorrow to look for another job. Bowling with friends is releasing her from filial slavery.
@pg 155. Job-searching Iggy, complaining about needing a job, is offered a job on the spot by a hot dog vendor. Iggy declines because there is a possibility it might snow (in Louisiana) while he is working selling hot dogs. This guy comes up with any excuse imaginable to avoid work. (1 page later) he is being threatened with violence to take this job, and he's still copping excuses!
@pg 161. Vending hot dogs, Iggy is stopped by a teenager who wants to buy one. Iggy refuses to sell to him because the boy is not aesthetically pleasing to look at. I swear, sometimes I think Ignatius is striving to be the least productive human being on the planet!
@pg 164. He is a bold-faced liar. He eats 8/12 hot dogs, then claims he was robbed at gunpoint. After all of that, he decides to take the job after all.
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Review:
That this book was published posthumously is one of the greatest travesties of American literature. This book is incredible. Each character is so flawed that it's hard to root for any of them. Each represents a different facet of American culture in caricature. It is all of the things I noted as I read it, and it is so much more as well.
This is the sort of book I feel I'm going to have to read multiple times to fully appreciate. (