The Bloated White Caterpillar of "A Confederacy of Dunces"

When I was an undergraduate at Augustana College, I got bored to death with Southern Gothic. It was all any English major ever talked about, except for Ulysses:  I had my fill of The Sound and the Fury, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Light in August, The Grass Harp, A Streetcar Named Desire, the disgusting stories of Flannery O'Connor and Eudora Welty...

So when everybody began praising A Confederacy of Dunces, around the fall of 1980, my junior year in college, I wasn't interested.

But they kept up.  Spectacular!  A masterpiece!  A classic!  The greatest novel ever (except for Ulysses).

Plus, like all "great novels," it had an interesting origin story.  John Kennedy Toole (1937-1969), a gigantic mass of flab, an aspiring writer, a literary wit, a permanent student who never finished his Ph.D. (although he was much smarter than his professors), an avid heterosexual stymied by constant "just friends' speeches from girls  (maybe cut back on the cake?), an anti-Catholic teaching at a Catholic college, a prude who railed against the vulgarity of the 1960s co-eds who filled his classes, finally couldn't take it anymore, and committed suicide at the age of 31.

While cleaning out his things, his mother found a carbon copy of a novel called A Confederacy of Dunces (the original had been rejected by some publishers and finally destroyed).  She contacted writer Walker Percy, who at first refused to read it -- who needed another Truman Capote, especially a heterosexual one?  But eventually he gave in, loved it, and after 11 years managed to get it into print.  The rest was history:  Stupendous!  Colossal!  A masterpiece!

Prey to peer pressure, I bought a copy, read a few pages, and threw it out, not so much offended as disgusted, like when you touch a door handle and there's something gross and sticky on it.  40 years later, I don't remember what the problem was.  I remember that it featured a bulbous jerk who hated everybody and everything except Boethius, but why the visceral disgust?  Why does it come back every time I hear about Confederacy.

So I found a preview on Amazon and read the first few pages.

Page 1: In a godforsaken small town in the South, no doubt somewhere near Yoknapatawpaw County,  the bulbous Ignatius waits for his mother to finish shopping and criticizes the fashion choices of passersby (Ignatius is O'Toole. I get it).  He's wearing a hunting cap and boots too small for his bulbous feet.  He's so fat that movement is difficult.


Page 2: The town turns out to be New Orleans (not that small).  More about how fat he is:  when he tries to move, "in his lumbering elephantine fashion," he sends "waves of flesh rippling."  Even his boots are swollen to bursting from his swollen fat feet. (This guy isn't just fat, he's a disgusting bloated white caterpillar with a nearly human face..  That's what caused the disgust!  I feel my gorge rising even now!).

Plowing on:  the bloated white caterpillar is upset because his favorite game at the arcade is missing, which we hear about for several paragraphs.  (Boring, but it beats hearing how fat he is again).

 Page 3: More about the arcade game.  A police officer, seeing his bag of sheet music and spare string for his lute, saunters up and asks him for an ID.  Ignatious objects, complaining that the city is full of criminals, like sodomites and lesbians.  Why not target them instead?  (And he's blathering homophobe!  Help!)

Page 4: Meanwhile, Mom is buying macaroons and cakes.  More about how fat her son is. She talks to a friend, who complains about her feet (More about feet!  Was Mr. Toole a bit of a foot fetishist?).  They discuss the fact that Ignatius isn't married, and how he gets nasty when she doesn't provide enough cake (he's nightmarishly fat -- I get it).

Page 5: Back on the street, people are gathering around in defense of Ignatius, and the cop threatens to arrest them, particularly when they imply that he might be a "comuniss." Fortunately, Mom comes to the rescue, macaroons and wine cake in hand (I'm never eating a piece of cake again.  I may never eat again, period).

According to wikipedia, I'm not missing much plot.  Confederacy seems to be mostly episodic, minor adventures with various colorful characters, in fact, just about everyone from his opening-cop diatribe, including a sodomite, lesbians, strippers, onanists, and so on.   Meanwhile, Ignatius discusses how vulgar modern society is, and how much he likes Boethius.  The only major events:  Mom decides to get married, and to commit Ignatius to a mental hospital (good!)

There's a statue of Ignatius on Canal Street in New Orleans, to scare away the tourists. He looks rather svelte for a bloated white caterpillar.

There have been numerous attempts to film the book, but most actors who have agreed to play Ignatius died before they could sign a contract: John Belusi, John Candy, Chris Farley, Divine.  John Goodman is still alive, but getting a little old to play the 20-ish misanthrope. Will Farrell and Zack Galifianakis have also agreed to star in versions that never got made (good!)

Oddly, I have no problems with chubs or even superchubs in real life.  I find them rather attractive.  But the bloated white caterpillar was disgusting. And homophobic.

Chai Hansen and Josh Thomson One to Hook Up with, One to Date

On The New Legends of Monkey on Netflix, Chai Hansen (front) plays Monkey, the deposed god, and Josh Thomson (rear) his sidekick Piggsy.  Pick one for a 15-minute hookup and one for a romantic date: dinner, cuddling on the couch, overnight, breakfast in the morning.















I choose Chai for the hookup and Josh for the date.

Sure, muscles are nice to look at, and so on, but cuddling with a slab of granite?  I'll take the belly any day.

I wanted to see moreof Josh Thomson.  His most famous starring role is in the Kiwi film Gary of the Pacific.  Youtube has the trailer.

Not a good start: Gary's girlfriend asks him to marry her.  But then we see Gary's bare butt (is it supposed to be humorous, not sexy?).

The plot:Gary is the son of the chief on an unspecified South Pacific island. He goes to New Zealand to get educated, and meanwhile gets an American girlfriend for some reason.  Then his father dies, so he has to go back home and take over. The economy is a mess, the island is sinking due to global warming, and there are sharks.

 Girlfriend, who tags along for "the wedding of her dreams," is less than thrilled by crass South Pacific culture. Auckland, it ain't.













Sounds rather heteronormative.  It's not available in the U.S., so I have no idea what this scene is about.

Thomson has been in about a thousand other movies and tv series, none available in the U.S.  But he's a big star in New Zealand.

No wife listed on wikipedia, but it's hard to research whether he's gay or not.  There's too much interference from another Josh Thomson, a  MMA fighter who compared gay marriage to incest, and then backtracked "I'm not against gay rights."

Maybe I should go on the date with Cha Hansen, instead.

It's Your Move

Before Married with Children demolished the myth of the euphoric nuclear family, It's Your Move (1984-85) did the same for the teencom.  Matt Burton (Jason Bateman, who would go on to star on The Hogan Family) seems to be a perfect teenage boy, but he's actually an unscrupulous, amoral operator, running a variety of scams and illegal businesses with the assistance of his best friend Eli (Adam Sadowski).  His only soft spot is for his mother, Eileen (Caren Kaye), so some of his schemes involve doing things for her, like getting her a raise at work.

Then struggling writer Norman Lamb (David Garrison, who would go on to star on Married...with Children) moves into the apartment across the hall and starts dating Matt's mom.  It turns out that there is also an unscrupulous, amoral operator lurking under his "nice guy" facade.  But not to worry, he has only honorable intentions.

Matt and Norman begin a battle of wits, cons, and blackmail, as each tries to gain power and demonstrate the other's true nature to an oblivious Eileen.

It was a welcome surcease from the TGIF sitcom jungle. Plus beefcake (David Garrison in extremely tight jeans), gay symbolism (hiding a secret life), and a decided lack of girl-craziness in Matt. Though his relationship with Eli didn't quite make the intensity of a homoromance.

The producers had high hopes for It's Your Move.  A tie-in novel was authorized, and up-and-coming star River Phoenix had a guest shot in the pilot.

Teen magazines began nonstop gushing over freckle-faced Jason Bateman..

Unfortunately, the network shoved the series into a Wednesday night timeslot opposite the blockbuster Dynasty, with the sixth season of The Facts of Life as a lead-in.  I watched, but apparently nobody else did.  Only 18 episodes aired.  You can see them on youtube.

White Water Summer/Stand By Me

Although panned by the critics and ignored by most heterosexuals, White Water Summer (1987) became a hit among gay kids and teenagers, maybe for the same reasons that they ignored the critically acclaimed Stand by Me the year before (1986).

 The plot of Stand: four boys (Will Wheaton, River Phoenix, Jerry O'Connell, Corey Feldman) brave a suburban wilderness on a weird quest to see a dead body.  En route they confront their anxieties and bond with each other.

The plot of Summer: four boys (Sean Astin, Jonathan Ward, Matt Adler, K.C. Martel) brave a wilderness on a white water rafting expedition, led by the brutal, abusive Vic (Kevin Bacon).  En route the confront their anxieties and bond with each other.
















The differences:

In Stand, the conflicts involve parentage, family, bullying, and heterosexual destiny.  In Summer, the conflicts involve the boys' relationships with each other and their dismay at the brutality of the adult world.

In Stand, the male body is a site of anxiety and despair; a boy is too fat, or has poor eyesight; leeches attack their crotches.  In Summer, the male body is a thing of beauty. The characters compliment each other, gaze at each other, lie prone against each other.







The boys of Stand are aggressively homophobic, throwing around the term "faggot" and challenging each others' "masculinity."  They are also aggressively heterosexual, discussing boobs, girls, having sex with girls, not having sex with girls.  The boys of Summer mention neither "faggots" nor girls.

Stand ends with the boys parting, and the adult narrator telling us what happened to them -- mostly involvng marriage and family, the "inevitable" loss of boyhood bonds.

Summer ends with the boys together, still friends, the same-sex bond intact.

The Stunt Kid

Born in 1973, Andre Gower worked steadily through the 1980s, guest starring on Night Court, Knight Rider, T. J. Hooker, and Mr. Belvedere, and starring starred in several tv series, including Mr. President (1987-88) as the son of the U.S. President (George C. Scott).  He was a recurring character on The Hogan Family.  He appeared in over 100 commercials.

Interested in stunts as well as acting, he performed a high-wire act on Circus of the Stars twice, in 1983 and 1987.

And he received incessant teen magazine attention.

But Andre's most famous role was in The Monster Squad (1987), a cult classic about a group of kid monster movie fans who encounter the real Frankenstein, Dracula, and so on.  He played the leader, Sean.  Patrick (Robby Kiger) was his best friend.  The others were Rudy (Ryan Lambert, left), a teenage hunk; Horace (Brent Chalem), a fat kid; and Eugene (Michael Faustino), a little kid.

Jason Hervey of The Wonder Years played a school bully.

Not a lot of buddy-bonding, but lots of dreamy teenagers for the gay kids to gaze at.  Only five or six homophobic slurs, a welcome relief in an era where preteens and teenagers in movies couldn't go a minute without broadcasting how much they hated gay people.   No discussions of girls' breasts, no gazing in awe at a girl walking in slow motion across the schoolyard.  There aren't even any lame "aren't boys horny?" jokes when they need a virgin girl to close the portal that the monsters come through.

In 1989, Andre retired from acting to go to college -- he played basketball for the University of North Carolina at Asheville.  After graduation, he has worked as a sports writer and journalist, but he still occasionally appears in front of the camera.

Willie Wonka and the Torture Factory

Name a movie that about a lavender-coated, gay-vague monster who lures five children into his lair with the promise of candy, then tortures and terrorizes them, killing three, before inviting the one he deems "good" to become his apprentice.

No, it's not Nightmare on Elm Street.  But you were close.

It's Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, a early entry in the torture-porn genre that parents inflicted on Boomer kids in the summer of 1971, causing not a few of them to be traumatized for life.  I still can't hear the song "Candy Man" without cringing.

The plot: Willy Wonka (Gene Wilder), the ultimate capitalist, produces candy for the town.  He offers a free tour of his factory to five kids who win a "golden ticket." Once they arrive, he terrorizes them.

He pretends to be disabled, and once they become adequately solicitious, does a somersault: "See, you were all sympathetic for nothing!  I'm really not disabled!"

What a nasty thing to do!

Even a boat trip down a chocolate river provides an excuse for Willie to toy with their emotions.  He starts shrieking:

Not a speck of light is showing, so the danger must be growing
Are the fires of Hell a-glowing? Is the grisly reaper mowing?

Oh, please -- they're just going to another part of the factory!

But then, he is always extremely volatile, level-head one moment, screaming the next.

Willy arranges for the children to be killed or transformed into something monstrous in retribution for some minor fault, like Billy Mumy's godlike demon in "It's a Good Life."

1. The tv-obsessed Mike Teevee (Paris Themmen) is shrunk to the size of a tv image.
2. The bratty Veruca Salt (Julie Dawn Cole) falls down a garbage chute  into the furnace, where she is burned to death.
3.  The gum-chewing Violet Beauregarde (Denise Nickerson) is transformed into a giant blueberry, whereupon she explodes.
4. The gluttonous Augustus Gloop (Michael Bollner) drowns in a river of chocolate.

 After they are murdered, Willy's slaves, the Oompa-Loompas, sing moralizing songs: if you refrain from chewing gum, over eating, being bratty, and watching tv, you'll "go far," like survive to the end of the torture factory tour.


Charlie (Peter Ostrum) is one of the irrepressibly good, blond waifs who populate adult fantasies about childhood innocence (others include Mark Lester, Jeremy Sumpter, Macaulay Culkin, and Ricky Schroeder).  He has an extremely creepy home life, living with four grandparents who are all bedridden -- and share the same bed.  Gross!

Charlie's fault is larceny -- he and one of his grandfathers sneak into a secret lab and steal an experimental soft drink.  But Willy just yells at Charlie instead of torturing him -- maybe he has a thing for blonds -- and the end offers to make him his apprentice torturer.

I guess even Freddy Krueger needed an assistant.

This was supposed to be fun?  No wonder most of the child stars never acted on film again.
Peter Ostrum is now a veterinarian in New York.
Michael Bollner is a tax accountant in his native Germany.
Julie Dawn Cole limits herself to television.
Paris Themmen works in live theater and film. production.
Even Peter Stewart, who played one of Charlie's friends in town, never acted again.

Would you?

The Full Monty

In the grim industrial town of Sheffield, ne'er do wells Gaz (Robert Carlyle, center) and Dave (Mark Addy) come up with an innovative way to make money -- they'll perform as male strippers, and make up for their less-than-spectacular physiques by offering "the full Monty," full frontal nudity.  They recruit shy, skinny Lomper (Steve Huison, left), their former boss Gerald (Tom Wilkinson), elderly dancer Horse (Paul Barber, right), and well-hung Guy (Hugo Speer, below).

The plan brings relationship problems, trouble with the police, ridicule from their mates, and concerns over their physical inadequacies and lack of talent, but in the end they rally together, and the whole town cheers as they strip to Tom Jones' "You Can Leave Your Hat On."

The buddy-bonding of the guys and the frequent underwear and jockstrap shots would be more than enough to make the movie a gay must-see, but there's also an explicit romance between Lomper and Guy.  No one knew that they were gay before.  Maybe they didn't know themselves.  But they escape from a police raid together, run across the housetops of Sheffield in their underwear, and take refuge in Lomper's house.  After that they are a couple, a fact casually recognized by their mates.

In 2000, The Full Monty premiered as a stage musical with an American setting. The Lomper and Guy characters, renamed Malcolm and Ethan, get a love song, "You Walk with Me."  There are also Danish, Czech, Japanese, Korean, Mexican, and Icelandic versions, and it is increasingly becoming a favorite of American college and community theaters.





Of course, the actors are expected to have unspectacular physiques, but their camaraderie and casual acceptance of same-sex romance -- and the jockstraps --more than makes up for it.

Besides, you never see the physiques of real, ordinary, everyday guys on stage.  Isn't that more interesting than a parade of muscle gods?