When I went into this project choosing to read A Confederacy of Dunces , I knew only a little about the book´s story and inspiration. The author, John Kennedy Toole, lived a life fairly similar to that of Ignatius--a man in his early 30s with a good education yet living with his mother, struggling to put write about his beliefs that he feels so urgently bear hearing. It's not hard to understand the unhappiness that the protagonist lives in, but it is a very effective means by which to understand the unhappiness that Toole himself lived in. A major question that surrounded the novel during its writing and publishing 11 years after Toole's suicide was that of whether or not it was an autobiography. His mother, Thelma Toole, vehemently opposed the idea that it was an autobiography when interviewed about it, and Toole himself described it as more of something that existed in the space between autobiography and invention. Thelma Toole played a major and note...