Best of John Kennedy Toole Scholarship #12: Rudnicki, Proboscis

As I said in June 2013, I would like to offer an annotated bibliography, one citation at a time, of the best of the scholarship on Toole's Confederacy that is findable via MLA Bibliography (as opposed to obscure). Here is item number twelve:

Citation: Rudnicki, Robert. "Toole's Proboscis: Some Effluvial Concerns in the Neon Bible." Mississippi Quarterly 47, no. 2 (1994): 221-236.

Annotation: As the title indicates, this article is primarily about Neon Bible; however, it does make some interesting observations about Confederacy. For example, the protagonist of Neon Bible, David, rails against intolerance. Ignatius, on the other hand, “ironically epitomizes the very intolerance that David rails against and is continually victimized by” (229). Rudnicki extends Clark’s position, arguing that Confederacy and Neon Bible both deal with the victimization of children, but in the case of Confederacy, the pain is covered “with a thick layer of … satire and scatology”. David is thin, diligent and supportive of his mother. Ignatius is fat, lazy, and depends on his mother. It is not critical to read this article when studying Confederacy, though it underscores the theme of child abuse throughout Toole’s writings.