A Confederacy of Dunces

Rating:
Summary: A hero for the ages!
Review: I have read this book three times now and let me tell you, everytime I read it I laugh harder than the time before! John Kennedy Toole has created a sarcastic, witty, misunderstood, often hilarious character that almost everyone can relate with on some level, with Ignatius J. Reilly. The hilarity starts in the very first chapter and doesn't stop. Had Mr. Toole not died tragically early in his career he may very well have been one of the most influential authors of our time. This book will have you laughing until you cry, then crying for more when your done!

Rating:
Summary: A Comic Masterpiece
Review: This book is quite simply a comic masterpiece, a novel brimming with original characters, absurd situations, and at its heart a blustery, vulnerable mama's boy named Ignatius J. Reilly. He is one of the most startlingly original characters in modern fiction, and his efforts at hitting the job market after his mother smashes their car will leave you in stitches.

A word on the history of the novel is worth mentioning here. The author, John Kennedy Toole, committed suicide in 1969, and his mother found the hand-written manuscript in her son's papers. She brought them to a publisher, who dreaded having to read even a portion of the work and to notify Toole's mother that it stunk. Instead, he was blown away by Toole's draft, and the rest is history. The novel earned him a posthumous Pulitzer Prize, and it is universally hailed by critics.

Trying to summarize the plot is impossible - the book cannot really be categorized. Ignatius is an over-educated oaf who stays home filling his writing tablets full of his offbeat musings on ancient history, which he plans to organize and publish some day but which presently reside all over his bedroom floor. Rome wasn't built in a day he reminds himself. He cites in footnotes, as authority for some of his offbeat opinions, papers he had previously written and hand-delivered to the local university library for inclusion into their archives. He watches dreadful tv shows and movies, howling at the screen with a mixture of delight and loathing at the teenybopper drivel, and in the privacy of his room his self-gratification is performed while imagining visions of the old family dog. And wait til you see him out in public, getting a series of odd jobs, including a filing clerk at Levy Pants (with very innovative filing techniques to avoid crowded file space) as well as a costumed hot dog vendor wandering around the French Quarter in a pirate costume. All the while he begins work on his latest opus, The Journal of the Working Boy.

There is a latent sadness to the plot, for while you are laughing out loud at Ignatius, his bowling-addicted mother, and the motley crew of skillfully drawn supporting characters, you sense that he will never really belong anywhere, and that he realizes his outcast status with his innate intelligence. Perhaps the author felt the same way in 1969, leading to his own suicide.

However, at least Toole did leave us A Confederacy of Dunces, a novel which reveals more with each rereading. Keep it on your shelf, and every now and then pick up the book to any page and marvel at the absurdity of Ignatius's grandiose ramblings, read exerpts of his bizarre historical writings, and revisit his comic efforts to organize a worker's revolt at Levy Pants. The list goes on and on. There is no work of litereature like it I know, and my only regret in reading Toole is the sorrow felt in knowing the tremendous body of work that was lost when he ended his life.

Rating:
Summary: A MODERN MASTERPIECE, A PROTO-SLACKER
Review: The story of this book is almost as intriguing as the book's story...read Percy's intro. for all the details.... This is a comic work of the highest order, recalling Rabelais, Cervantes, Swift, Voltaire, Checke Greene and other masters of the funny bone. Set in the bohemian and working-class quarters of New Orleans, the novel features Ignatius J. O'Reilly, a grotesque and loveable anti-hero (if such a label is possible). Toole is a brilliant writer, able to draw pathos and humor from the same page. Plot, setting and characterization are all impeccable. If you like stories about obese, stiltedly chivalrous, gluttonous, slothful, idealistic, oft-cruel, vulgar, multisyllabic weenie-vendors, this is undoubtedly your novel of choice.

Rating:
Summary: A Lesson for All Artists Everywhere
Review: John Kennedy Toole wrote this one great book and sent it around to publishers and agents, but nobody wanted to publish it or even much liked it, so he committed suicide. After he was dead, it won the Pulitzer Prize. (If the internet had been around, he could have just posted it online, and we all could have enjoyed it--emailed to tell him--then maybe he'd still be writing timeless literature.) The farcical structure of this outrageous novel and its wonderful characters will be a source of joy forever. Lesson: Don't kill yourself too soon. Also: Trust yourself. And: Read "A Confederacy of Dunces!"

Rating:
Summary: Hilarious
Review: I have read and reread this book 3 or 4 times in the last 10 years, and it is always hilarious. Reilly is a Forrest Gump type of character, the craziest things happen to him without him really ever trying. The situations and characters are very creative and refreshing. A must read. Warning, you will either love or hate this book.

Rating:
Summary: How to Tick Off the True Believers
Review: Everything about this novel is sophomoric, but the humor is particularly so. That it has emerged as a "cult classic" is no surprise, given the overall sensibility of the reading public these days. In the early 80's I worked in a book store on Canal street in New Orleans for three years. The locals that I talked to who knew this guy were all amazed that the book was garnerning such accolades. John Kennedy Toole was every bit the mama's-boy schlep portrayed by the protagonist in this work. His mother was an exceptionally mean-spirited, foul-mouthed drunk. There are indeed some colorful characters in the French Quarter and at times Toole captures some of their idiosyncratic behavior adequately. But to call this misshapen collection of semi-humorous vignettes a comic masterpiece is a cruel publishing hoax. This is an example of how a nondescript work can become so inflated by the great American hype-machine as to finally emerge as some sort of accepted masterwork, never to be equalled, unparalleled. I'm surprised Toole wasn't posthumously awarded the Nobel as well. Apparently there are a great number of readers still buying into the hype, judging by the reviews. I'm obviously not interested in moving up the sacred review ladder, just letting people know how I feel about this inferior piece of literature. Judging by the negative responses, I have accomplished what I have set out to do, garner as many votes against as I could possibly muster. Sometimes, a person just has to do what a person has to do. In this case it is to call attention to the fact that this novel is written by a dunce for like-minded dunces, or stooges, or simpletons or whatever monniker you want to attach to the febrid enthusiasts who believe this is some sort of example of true literature. My only question is, what were you smoking, when you came to the belief that this dreck could possibly pass as writing? We have already attained "Planet of the Apes" status, apparently.

Rating:
Summary: Hysterical bit of absurdity
Review: I mean, absurd the way Three Men In a Boat is absurd. Both are outright parodies, just of a different time and place, and I don't think I've ever read a book quite like the two of them.

Ignatius is hysterical and eerily like some of my old high school classmates. Jones is one cool cat, and the only character with any inkling of how freakin' weird their world is. Mrs. Reilly is a riot, and ends up very nearly a figure of female empowerment. Best of all is Mancuso, the pathetic undercover cop whose various costumes are the delight of the French Quarter.

Read this book. It's certainly fun, and you probably won't ever forget it.

Rating:
Summary: I've had this book for 5 years.....
Review: and never read it till now. Outstanding characters. I wanted to reach into the book and strangle the main character, Ignatius, several times but then could not wait to see what he would do next.

Rating:
Summary: Ignatius is my neighbor!
Review: I thought I'd die when I saw the cover of this book. It was my neighbor- not only in looks but in personality. A big, fat sloppy boor who barely works (he's on 'disability' for 4 jobs), repeatedly tells the same stories, in great detail, concerning every trivial thing that's ever happened to him, and of course, is a pompous, pretentious jerk that conveys a superior attitude. Their house is a pigpen, and everything they own is dirty or broken, yet listening to him talk to strangers, you would think he lived in a mansion.

A lot of reviewers said they tired of Ignatius but you know, every morning my huband's co-workers stop by his office eager to find out if he has any 'Sumner stories' (yes, his name is Sumner Minor lastname III). Isn't that a howl! Ignatius lives.

This was a well-written book about someone all of us have known at some time in our life. People like Ignatius don't have a clue that while they think they are impressing people they actually look like giant fools. I think that O'toole did a fine job of tapping into the mind of people who are legends in their own minds.

Rating:
Summary: Hilarious!
Review: I don't laugh easy. A book is good if it can make me chuckle, but at some parts of this book, my sides hurt and my eyes were watering! Ignatius J. Reilly and his outrageous adventures as Fortuna keeps spinning him all around New Orleans make this masterpiece a side-splitting rollercoaster ride from cover to cover. Inexplicably sad and unbelievably funny, A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES is a must-read for EVERYBODY, EVERYWHERE!