Judge A Book By Its Cover
Book Reviews and Synopses
A Confederacy of Dunces
John Kennedy Toole
Toole, John Kennedy. Confederacy of Dunces. Grove Press. New York, NY. 1980.
A Confederacy of Dunces is a well written book by John Kennedy Toole who is famous for the amazing characters he depicts. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, it is an exceptionally funny book. This book depicts New York in the 1960s. It is a fun and interesting story about smart and not so smart people.
A Confederacy of Dunces is about a worker in a factory in old New York named Gusto. In this factory there were smart people who got all the good jobs, and there were the not smart people who got all the really hard and bad jobs. Gusto was one of the more intelligent, not smart people. Work for the not smart people was getting worse and worse. The smart people were trying to cut the less smart peoples pay. So the less smart people formed a committee called the Confederacy of Dunces.
The committee started out small, getting better jobs in the company, and getting paid more by not falling for the smarter people’s tricks. Then one evening, Gusto suggested to the committee that it was not enough to have better jobs. He said “everyone should have a fair chance to get the best jobs.” The committee made a plan to have Gusto, one of their strongest and smartest, to break into the factory at night time and take control. That night he was off with with his swearing parrot, and a smile on his face.
This attempt failed and a night watchman caught him, so he and the committee went back to the drawing board to make a better plan. For weeks they where hard at work. Finally, the committee had got a plan. As Gusto a walked along his same path he had at the first attempt he thought. There were many things that could go wrong.
A Confederacy of Dunces is a great story of comedy. People never knew about John Kennedy Toole until he wrote this book. This book could get anyone laughing.
5 out of 5 stars
Contributed by G.Sperry
May, 22., 2011