Seb's Web

For some reason, this book truly polarizes people, it’s a true “love it or hate it” piece of literature. I’m in the minority, the second category, and I wish I had enjoyed it more because irreverent comedies with rude characters and crazy scenarios are right up my alley. Perhaps I could not put enough distance between me and the characters because I loathed them all. What I found interesting was that the author wrote this as if he loathed them just as much. You’d be hard-pressed to actually like a bunch of brutes and idiots, but Toole seemed to dislike writing about them too. This leads the book on a path to disaster because as any person who has come in contact with a narrative in their life can tell you: characters are what drive a story forward and make it compelling.

The characters themselves don’t need to be likeable to make a story successful. We all enjoy misers (Dr House), sociopaths (Gone Girl), fools (It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia), out-of-touch socialites (The Great Gatsby) or straight-up psychos (American Psycho). But something has to click there, the characters need to connect or complement each other or the subtext should speak louder.
“Dunces” just manages to present the surface level of a world that’s a collection of unlikeable morons, from the perspective of an even bigger moron.

Ignatius is dull and tiring, a pseudo-intellectual who misunderstands literature and considers himself to be above everyone else. Perhaps in the current social context, where idiocy of even greater magnitude is accessible in any video’s comment section, his kind of people are a dime a dozen so Ignatius is no longer a refreshing character. As a side note, he’s definitely suffering from some untreated mental illnesses, but even if he’s just a miserable sod, sending him into a city filled with other suckers, it almost reads like therapy notes from a mental ward.

Sadly, this brings us to Toole himself, who had a troubled mind and an unfortunate life which ended too quickly. I truly think he was talented and the book is well-written, even though I actively disliked it. It’s a cliche to say someone was born in the wrong era, but I think if he had been born 50 years later he would have found greater success. He would have had a lot of inspiration in this century and could have written a Netflix series a la “It’s Always Sunny” or “Bojack”.

Unfortunately, with Ignatius at the wheel, driving through this ensemble cast of nitwits and nincompoops, 400 pages almost felt like 4000. In any other format, like a Chuck Lorre-style sitcom, or as a play (I know Nick Offerman played Ignatius in one) it would have been more palatable. It had funny moments, and I still recommend it just for the experience, but for my taste, it was a dull affair.