A Confederacy of Dunces (1969/1980) by John Kennedy Toole: If nothing else, A Confederacy of Dunces possesses one of the saddest origin stories in American publishing history. New Orleans writer and academic John Kennedy Toole committed suicide in 1969 in his early 30's.
His mother persistently kept trying to get editors to read this novel for the next decade. As detailed in the introduction to this edition by Walker Percy, she finally got Percy to look at it in the late 1970's. Percy was suitably impressed. A Confederacy of Dunces would be published in 1980, to nigh-universal critical acclaim and tremendous sales.
The focus of the novel is one of the most comically grotesque of literary comic-grotesques, Ignatius J. Reilly. Morbidly obese, possessed of awesomely bad fashion sense, possessed of horrifyingly deficient personal hygiene... these are just a few of the 30ish man-child's attributes.
He hates the modern world with a passion and longs for the reinstatement of medieval values. He masturbates while thinking of idyllic childhood days with his (now) dead dog. He gets violently ill while travelling in public transportation. He pontificates, prevaricates, and fantasizes about lashing his female enemies about the genitalia. He's homophobic, heterophobic, bigoted, and lazy almost beyond belief. He's a Mama's Boy who despises his mother.
One of the truly odd things about the novel is that while Reilly is a parody of certain academic "types" (his dissertation stalled out despite his averaging a paragraph a month), he's now weirdly appropriate for our Internet Outrage Era. He's immensely judgmental of everyone other than himself. His rage is never far from the surface. He's a coward and a bully. He even loves Batman. Jesus, would he have been a hoot while Game of Thrones was ending.
Reilly supplies much of the comic horror of the novel, though certainly not all of it. Major characters and minor struggle through a comically infernal New Orleans. Reilly's mother forces him to finally get a job after an auto-related disaster at the beginning of the novel. Reilly's voyage through the workplace supplies the plot thread; Reilly's desire to one-up his long-distance female nemesis/soul-mate Myrna Minkoff in sparking various political "revolutions" lays comic waste to everything around him.
Set-pieces involving Reilly's time at a dilapidated clothing factory, his adventures at a run-down bar, his speaking engagement at a gay party, and his adventures selling hot dogs from a cart while dressed as some sort of pirate really need to be experienced rather than synopsized.
A Confederacy of Dunces has famously resisted movie adaptation for decades -- John Belushi and John Candy are only two of the notables attached to failed projects. I'm not sure if a faithful adaptation is possible. Covers for various editions generally try to make Reilly look cute or even cartoony.
But while his appearance is indeed comical, it's also grotesque to the point that it would defeat audience sympathy to, for instance, depict Reilly sucking down hot dogs and then slurping his own face with his enormous tongue, all in the context of someone who does not seem to bathe, or believe in bathing. So Reilly would be turned into a wacky but lovable fat man, and the sharp edges of the novel sanded off. Reilly and his true nemesis, a kicky pyloric valve, should probably be left to the printed page, in all his ragged and horrible glory. Highly recommended.
First Man (2018): adapted by Josh Singer from the book by James R. Hansen; directed by Damien Chazelle; starring Ryan Gosling (Neil Armstrong), Claire Foy (Janet Armstrong), Jason Clarke (Ed White), Kyle Chandler (Deke Slayton), and Corey Stoll (Buzz Aldrin): Sober, often brilliant biopic about Neil Armstrong from his days as a civilian test pilot to the lunar landing.
The film is shockingly true to history, even to making Armstrong a closed-off, emotional cipher to his friends and family. But Armstrong's strength is his ability to work a problem in the middle of that problem, staying cool and (literally) calculating when things fall apart in the air, in orbit, or above the lunar surface. Ryan Gosling does about as good a job as an actor can do with a role this muted.
Damien Chazelle, late of La La Land, doesn't quite have the poetry (or the poetic license) of Phil Kaufman on The Right Stuff. But he does have an attention to detail and a rigor when it comes to presenting the realities of what things actually look like in space and on the lunar surface.
Chazelle also sets up a tension between the cramped quarters of the vehicles and the wide-open spaces through which these vehicles hurl that is nothing less than inspired. He also manages an understated dread during the film's depiction of the Apollo 1 fire that suggests he should try a horror movie next.
The cast delivers throughout, with a special nod to Claire Foy as Janet Armstrong, perpetually trying to draw Neil out emotionally. Corey Stoll is a hoot as the brash Buzz Aldrin, and Jaosn Clarke is excellent as Armstrong's closest friend in the Apollo program, Ed White. Highly recommended.
Withnail and I: written and directed by Bruce Robinson; starring Paul McGann ('I'), Richard E. Grant (Withnail), and Richard Griffiths (Monty) (1987): A cult movie that seems now to be embraced by the mainstream, Withnail and I is quirky, funny, and occasionally self-indulgent. Cult movies often are self-indulgent -- that's partially how they become cult movies.
A certain type of person in his or her early 20's is going to discover this film and see so much of himself or herself in it that it will become a signpost for that certain time of life when some people don't entirely know what's coming next, but do know that what's going on now has to end, and soon.
Withnail is a very, very unsuccessful actor in London in his late 20's; 'I' is a slightly less unsuccessful actor and Withnail's roommate. It's autumn of 1969. They're drunk a lot and stoned a lot. Their apartment is overrun with dirty dishes, rats, and the occasional loveable drug dealer. Withnail cons his uncle Monty (a flaming Richard Griffiths) into giving them the keys to his country cottage. They go off for a restorative weekend in the country.
'I' narrates the film -- writer-director Bruce Robinson based the events on things that happened to him over a five-year span -- with a paranoid, puzzled elan. Withnail, perpetually drunk and perpetually, outlandishly over-sized in speech and gesture, is both frustrating and magnetic. Griffiths's Monty, initially a caricature, grows into a sympathetic character without losing his own out-sized charm. A lot of the humour of the country sequences springs from the utter incompatibility of the two leads with country living -- they might as well be trying to vacation on the moon without spacesuits.
Grant's Withnail is the flamboyant, self-destructive, untrustworthy showpiece of the film, while McGann holds down the fort with his befuddled, panic-attack-prone protagonist. To some extent, it's like a Sherlock Holmes movie with no crime.
There's a certain sadness to the end of the film that I imagine a lot of people identify with the end of their college days, and an end to spending huge amounts of time with friends one will soon lose touch with, forever. I can imagine a lot of people hating this film, but those who will like it, will probably end up loving it. Highly recommended.
