Jodee Blanco

was unimpressed and a little confused when I first read this. I was a teenager. The person who gave me it, did so after she finished it. I read (ha ha) -far- too much into what she was doing at the time. I finished it, gave it to a consignment shop, and put it out of my mind for the next twenty years. Now, a few days ago as of this writing, I read it again via ebook. It's no wonder I was confused by this book as a teenager.
This is a memoir. I had thought it was fiction upon first read because of how poorly it was written, I thought back then. Surely no one would write about such bullying as an adult and it would never be a popular read. As an adult who is uninterested in memoirs, I neutrally note: any memoir can be published and popular for any reason. I'm not being snide; I'm neutral on the whole.
I believe the author went through what she said she did. I believe the teachers indeed ignored the whole thing and gaslit her. I believe her parents indeed victim-blamed her and sent her to a shrink. And in the seventies, when there was an enormous stigma attached! I am truly sorry for what she went through.

There's an incredibly insightful introduction...she wrote to her own memoir...which is a huge sign of her own ego. Uh, wow, okay. One of her colleagues makes wonderfully astute remarks about bullying and -why it's pardoned.- I do not -care- why people bully. I care about why it's pardoned! I care that victims are just told to get over it, by teachers and others! I care that bullies are totally shocked when victims can violently lash out. The author's colleague addresses all these, and the author reflects on that.
And promptly ignores it for the entire book. Lots of cognitive dissonance going on there. Gross.

She's writing about her childhood and teen years through an adult lens. She is fucking insufferable. I kept reading, waiting for her to cool off. Not for a moment did she stop being pretentious. Sure, she dialed it down when describing the harms, but that's because she's still understandably affected. Her Catholic worldview is slathered on every single page. In fanfiction, she'd get called a Mary Sue and told to go to counseling. Seriously, your bullies -magically- think you're so hot all along? And at the reunion, one of her tormentors sheepishly asks if she's in the bullying memoir. Indicates the bully knew what she was doing was wrong! Teenagers share qualities of sociopaths, some branches of psychiatry note. It's evident here. She -magically- forgives every single bully at that reunion. WHAT THE FUCK IS SHE ON?!
Or more nicely: why the hell did she decide to forgive them at the snap of her fingers?
-That- would be an excellent time to link it to her Catholic worldview. Her reasons for forgiving them are never, ever examined. It's like the audience was just supposed to go, "Oh, horrific treatment and physical beatings are totes okay, it was the seventies, it was a different time haha kids will be kids." Because that's how the adults around her treated it. But no, there's no stated reason.

Why did she even go to the reunion? I just can't wrap my mind around that one. She glosses over a -lot- of her own emotions, simply recounting bullying incident after bullying incident at different schools and how adults blamed her and refused to intervene. Multiple bullies said to her "Let me know if I can help writing your book!" which I took to be a cruel joke of the "laugh off my behaviors and thank me in the acknowledgments section! You came to the reunion, so clearly you're not upset" variety.
She...smiles in the center of a photo with all her bullies at the end, and forgives them all, and they put their arms around her.
I just--what?. In fanfiction, this is what would happen to a Mary Sue. It's explained with the same amount shallowness and "if -you- don't get this, reader, then -you- are emotionally stunted."
I wish I could wish upon her healing and peace. But uh, happy photo so she's already got it?

I don't recommend this book for -anyone-, ever.
AND THERE'S A SECOND MEMOIR?!
(original paragraph was so mean-spirited that I decided to redact it)
Save time and brain cells and skip this.… (altro)

I don't write many reviews (I'd rather spend the time reading more books). When I do contribute a review, it's usually because I think the book is excellent and want to call other readers' attention to it, or because I think it is not worthy of one's time and I want to warn off other readers. This book, unfortunately, falls into the latter category.

My interest in "I, John Kennedy Toole" stems from knowing four persons who knew Toole (one of them a childhood friend, two of his coworkers, and a student whom he tutored). I also had a (mercifully) brief acquaintance with his mother in 1980, and I can confirm that the authors' depiction of the dominating, delusional Thelma Toole is spot-on (and is the reason I gave the book a second star). Otherwise, I can add little to the two excellent and incisive reviews that have been posted already.

This book contributes little beyond sadly chronicling a dysfunctional family that happened to include a prize-winning author. At its worst, it gives life to Toole's fictional character Ignatius J. Reilly, treating him as a person rather than a character in a novel (well, two novels, counting this one): e.g., "When Kenny [Toole] and Ignatius returned from Wisconsin..." (page 177). The contributor of one of the dust-jacket testimonials enthused, "I love the twisting time frame!" but this reader did not.

Although the blurb asserts that the story behind Toole's novel "A Confederacy of Dunces" is "mostly unknown," it is not undocumented. Readers who want to know more about Toole's background would be well advised to seek out articles or "Butterfly in the Typewriter," a biography by Cory MacLauchlin.… (altro)

LACKING TASTE, DECENCY, THEOLOGY AND GEOMETRY

There are a few good books about John Kennedy Toole and his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, “A Confederacy of Dunces.” “I, John Kennedy Toole” is not one of them.

It’s not a biography like “Butterfly in the Typewriter.” Nor is it a memoir like “Ken and Thelma.” Instead, it’s what Toole’s protagonist Ignatius J. Reilly might have denounced as an “abortion.”

The book is a disorganized, plodding narrative that adds little to the Toole story. It’s a shame because one of the authors, Kent Carroll, was an editor at Grove Press when it bought the paperback rights to “Confederacy.”

Worse, it disrespects Toole’s memory with fictionalized nonsense. One example: Toole gets an erection thinking about author Flannery O’Connor, who was twelve years older and crippled by a debilitating disease. It also posits that the fastidious Toole was Ignatius, a slob. Toole’s mother and friends have denied this.

In addition, the book’s main premise will be hard for some readers to accept: that Toole deliberately killed himself so he could be famous. Even Ignatius, portrayed as a voice in Toole’s head, was in on the decision. He then came to regret it because Toole was no longer alive to let him out of his manuscript box coffin.

Carroll’s role in launching “Confederacy” as a Grove paperback is commendable and a worthy addendum to what is already known. But more detail would have been nice, especially since his involvement with the book ultimately cost him his job.

Other than that, it seems that the authors had so little new to offer that they had to resort to fiction. Even that has its limits, given that the book is well padded with national news events from the timeline of Toole’s life.

To Toole fans who who already know the story behind “Confederacy”: This book could seal your pyloric valve.… (altro)

By now, most fiction readers know who John Kennedy Toole was and at least a little about the failed struggle he went through to get his novel A Confederacy of Dunces published. They know that the book did not get published in Toole’s lifetime – and that Toole took his own life. They know that his mother took up the struggle to get the book published after Toole’s suicide, and that with the help of people like Walker Percy and Kent Carroll she finally got that done. And, they know that A Confederacy of Dunces won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction when it was finally published in 1980. These, though, are just the barest of facts about John Kennedy Toole and the prize-winning novel that even today has somewhat of a cult following. What most of us still wonder about is what would drive such a young, talented writer to so deep a despair that he would choose to end his life over continuing to try to interest a publishing house in his work. The man was only thirty-one, after all, when he asphyxiated himself on that deserted backroad near Biloxi, Mississippi.

Now, Kent Carroll (the same Kent Carroll who was so instrumental in getting the book published in the first place) and Jodee Blanco offer their own well-researched insights into the John Kennedy Toole story. I, John Kennedy Toole is billed on its cover as “A Novel Based on a True Story,” and that is exactly how the novel reads. Much of it reads more like a biography than it does a fictional account of Toole’s life, complete with historical references to remind the reader of exactly what was going on in the real world during each of the specific years of Toole’s life being explored at the moment. Too, dialogue between characters is rather limited, with most of it occurring in the second half of the novel, further giving the book its biographical feel.

That the authors chose to use this form to tell Toole’s story is both the good news and the bad news. On the one hand, fiction allows the authors to speculate about what was really going on inside Toole’s head to a degree and a depth that no biography would have allowed them to do. On the other, so much specific biographical information is included, complete with dates, names, locations, and the like, that the reader is left unsure as to where the facts end and the fiction begins. Even the fictional reporter who investigates Toole’s life some twenty-five years or so after his book’s publication, is not completely sure when people are lying to him or just struggling with their personal memories of significant events in Toole’s life.

What is particularly interesting in I, John Kennedy Toole is the authors’ speculation that Toole’s mental state allowed him to see Ignatius J. Reilly, the obese loudmouth main character from Dunces, as a real person. The fictional Toole often argues loudly in public with the demanding, obnoxious Ignatius, and even feels that he has let the man down by not being able to present his story to the larger world. Especially often on the final road trip that would end with Toole’s suicide were the two verbally at each other’s throats. That Toole suffered from some combination of paranoia, depression, and perhaps schizophrenia seems likely, and the authors take full advantage of that state of mind to explain his short life.

The key relationship in Toole’s life was the one between him and his dominating mother, a relationship that likely exacerbated, at least in part, Toole’s depression problems. If it were not for the efforts of Toole’s mother, his masterpiece would have never been published; that is beyond doubt. That the woman is a very flawed heroine is also beyond doubt, and the authors make that point very clearly in their novel.

Bottom Line: I, John Kennedy Toole is a well-researched novel that fans of Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces will want to read, if for no other reason than their desire to learn more about what drove the author to such a level of despair. The concept of the novel is a good one, but at times this one can read more like a dry biography than as the fictional account of a doomed man’s life that it is. Still, it is worth the effort, and I recommend it to anyone interested in John Kennedy Toole’s story.… (altro)