New Adaptation Of 'The Funniest Book Of All Time' Out Today
Ambrose Tardive is an editor on ScreenRant's Comics team. Over the past two years, he has developed into the internet's foremost authority on The Far Side. Outside of his work for ScreenRant, Ambrose works as an Adjunct English Instructor.
It is often called the "funniest novel of all time," but it has a tragic backstory. A movie adaptation of A Confederacy of Dunces has been in development hell for decades, ever since the book won the 1981 Pulitzer Prize, but aside from a short, successful stage run starring Nick Offerman, it has taken 46 years for Dunces to be transposed into another medium.
As it turns out, the comic form is the perfect fit for John Kennedy Toole's brilliantly funny book. Out today is a graphic novel update of A Confederacy of Dunces from Boom! Studios and its imprint Archaia Entertainment. For anyone who has had the beloved book on their to-read list for too long, the brand-new graphic novel is worth checking out as a primer for and love letter to the original.
Chances are, those who do will find themselves charmed by precocious protagonist Igantius J. Reilly, "one of literature's most unforgettable characters," as the publisher's log line for the graphic novel rightly calls him, just like generations of readers have before them.
The remarkable thing about Reilly, and A Confederacy of Dunces, though, is just how close the character and novel came to being more than just forgotten. Toole's novel was almost lost to the world completely, which would have been a devastating blow to world literature. Now, author and illustrator Albert Monteys has taken up the task of preserving Dunces' legacy with this new iteration.
46 Years After The Novel Was Published, "A Confederacy Of Dunces" Gets An Overdue Adaptation
John Kennedy Toole was just thirty-one years old when he took his own life in 1969. He left behind the manuscript for A Confederacy of Dunces, which he'd given up hope of publishing. In the decade that followed, Toole's mother made it her mission to get the novel released. It finally came out in 1980, and was immediately lauded as a masterpiece.
The beating heart of A Confederacy of Dunces is Ignatius J. Reilly, who is clearly an author surrogate in many ways. He's a dysfunctional academic who lives with his mom. Brilliant, but at odds with the world. And he's funny, like Toole was known to be. All of that comes across vividly in Albert Monteys' graphic novel adaptation.
The prose of A Confederacy of Dunces gives readers a clear-as-day portrait of Ignatius, and art accompanying various printings of the novel has already brought that vision to life in a way that has stuck in readers minds' for nearly fifty years. Nick Offerman fully embodied the character during his memorable stage performance as Ignatius, over a decade ago, but beyond that, the Dunces graphic novel is the first sustained time readers have gotten to spend with the character visually.
"A Confederacy Of Dunces" Deserves A New Generation Of Readers; The Graphic Novel Could Spark That
The Confederacy of Dunces graphic novel captures the spirit of the novel, which is regarded as an all-time great satire, as well as an evocative portrait of a man on the edge. The edge of a breakthrough, or a breakdown, or both. There's an energy to John Kennedy Toole's work that is hard to replicate, and Albert Monteys does his best to preserve it, at least.
As early as 1982, the year after Toole won a posthumous Pulitzer for Dunces, the gears were already turning on a Hollywood adaptation of the one-of-a-kind novel. John Belushi seemed like a natural fit for Ignatius, but the development of what might have been his next great collaboration with John Landis was cut short by Belushi's own premature death. Other noted actors, including John Goodman and Will Farrell, have circled the role, but a movie has never materialized.
The new graphic novel is the closest thing fans of the novel will get to a living, breathing Ignatius J. Reilly for the time being. The adaptation is said to be "reimagined for a new generation of readers and lifelong fans alike," and hopefully it will ignite a new wave of appreciation for A Confederacy of Dunces ahead of the landmark 50th anniversary of its publication, and over sixty years since it was written.
Will you give the Confederacy of Dunces graphic novel a shot, readers?
KioskNews shows a cleaned-up reading view extracted from the publisher’s page — the original always lives on their site, not ours.