Confederacy of Dunces
And to think a dunce was - once - a pedant.
I loved this title. Before I loved the book. It spoke to my experience as well.
I am not sure how the book, authored by a teen ager in the 1960s who committed suicide at the age of thirty-one, came to my attention, but it did. Since it was published in the early 1980s, it might have been prominently displayed at my favorite book haunt in downtown Seattle - Elliott Bay Books. Like many movies, events, books the content fell victim to my random access memory. Without looking up a description of the book, I could not tell you one thing about it.
Except. . . that I liked it immensely.
I see it is described online, over and over, as “picaresque”.
Picaresque means a genre of prose fiction that depicts the adventures of a roguish, but "appealing hero", of low social class, who lives by his wits in a corrupt society. Picaresque novels typically adopt a realistic style, with elements of comedy and satire.
Thank you, once again, Wikipedia.
The title is derived from a quote by Jonathan Swift.
When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him. - from Swift’s “THOUGHTS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS, MORAL AND DIVERTING”
The book was published posthumously after John Kennedy Toole’s mother pestered publishers to read her deceased son’s writing. It's quite a story. Both the irreverent novel and the mom’s tenaciousness.
At the bottom I will insert a link to a PDF of the complete novel, but I stole the title because it is fitting for ‘all the president’s men’ - and women. They epitomize many additional monikers, but they are certainly “dunces”. I am going to provide some brief wrap-up bios that are nowhere near exhaustive. The dunces themselves are exhaustive.
Michael Flynn is a retired general who President Obama specifically suggested should not be given a role in the incoming administration. He led “lock her up” chants at the Republican convention that year and then lasted about 24 days as the new National Security Adviser because he had a propensity to lie. More recently he has been pardoned and he immediately publicly stated that the lame duck president should declare the election null and void and institute martial law. There is also an online video of him taking the QAnon “oath”.
Sidney Powell, aka “The Kraken”. Well, you won’t be surprised that she has Texas ties and law offices in Dallas. She was Flynn’s lawyer in 2019 and she’s another QAnon believer. (Refresher on QAnon. It’s a conspiracy theory where people believe the current quack president is going to uncover and demolish an enormous ring of pedophiles which includes a Who’s Who of Left Coast and DC elites. If he does, it will be to merely preserve his own ass because he is up to his eyeballs in the Jeffery Epstein/Ghislaine Maxwell scandal. But, other than that possibility. . . hahahahahahaha!). She’s one of the lawyers challenging the election results and - you know how lawyering has a lot of boilerplate stuff? - somehow she managed to misspell the word “district” so often in court filings that QAnon conspiracists started viewing them as clues. Anyway, she’s a crackpot.
Jenna Ellis, part of the president’s crack(pot) elite team of legal scholars trying to overthrow the government via the conservative-packed court system, is another one of those people who despised Benedict Donald for what he was because it was as clear day to any animate object, but who, suddenly, had a change of heart perhaps having something to do with her connection with the ultra-religious windbag, James Dobson. Initially, the randy president was too much for her Christian outlook, but she must have fallen into his charismatic glow. She touts herself as a “constitutional scholar” but her colleagues in Denver had a different take. One of them described her as “an attorney of scant accomplishment.” She now has the notoriety of having “America’s mayor” fart in her general direction. Things are certainly looking up for Ms. Ellis.
Mellissa Carone was the hilarious witness at the Michigan hearings where Snopes.com agrees the audio of someone farting was real. She sat on the ‘port’ side of Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis was on the ‘downwind’ side. When watching her being questioned by a Republican state lawmaker, you’d swear she was a Saturday Night Live character. Turns out she is the “not credible” witness the crack(pot) elite legal team trotted out in Pennsylvania as well. It is also notable that even the head of the confederacy tried - unsuccessfully - to “reel her back” at that failed hearing in Michigan.
And the greatest dunce of them all who, just today, has been hospitalized for COVID-19 symptoms, is Rudolph William Louis Giuliani. He’s working for $20,000 a day and a pre-emptive pardon. I don’t think the “if it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a lame duck” president is getting his money’s worth. Of course, it’s not his money.
Rudy’s had a bad 2020.
Caught on film trying to “pitch a tent” in a Borat movie, melting down at a news conference like a cheap candle, initiating a coup from a landscaping company’s parking lot in the industrial part of Philly, flailing about like a flounder on a cubist trawler as if he hadn’t practiced law in decades (which he hasn’t) and now he has coronavirus. After spreading it far and wide. Sure hope no one sues him for that.
I could not resist including another photo of the classiest press conference EVER!
And none of this even includes all the shady shit he was doing related to Ukraine and the president’s supposedly non-event quid pro quo, which we have all forgotten about because we are all buried daily in an avalanche of bull doody.
Sigh.
Heavy sigh.
John Kennedy Toole cast a jaundiced eye at the society he observed in the mid-20th century and, even then, all he saw were a confederacy of dunces.
Is it January 20th yet?
By the way:
And, as an aside, the history and etymology of the word “dunce”.
The irony of dunce lies in the fact that this synonym of dullard is derived from the name of one of the most brilliant thinkers of the Middle Ages, John Duns Scotus. So ingenious were the theological and metaphysical speculations of this thinker that he was given the name “the Subtle Doctor.” However, in the 16th century, his followers became a conservative element in English universities, and they tended to resist the new learning of humanism. As result, dunsman and the shortened form duns (later respelled as we have it today), became terms of scorn, meaning first “sophist” or “pedant” and gradually taking on the modern sense “slow-witted person.”
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Remember. I recalled nothing about this novel other than I enjoyed reading it. Caveat emptor! (I don’t know the Latin for reader beware!)
Also, excellent article about where some of the “avalanche of bull doody” originates.
A heartfelt Thank you to those who have been so kind as click on the link above and - despite your best judgement - “encouraged” me. (“Don’t do it. You’re just going to encourage him!”) Thanks also to those who use it as an opportunity to reach out. - JLM