Rating: 
Summary: I really wanted to like this book, but . . .
Review: I read this book a couple of years ago after having read rave reviews of it and an article stating that Toole was nothing short of a genius. I really thought that I'd like it. I tried to like it, but I had to struggle just to get through it. I thought that Ignatius was a fatuous, unlikeable windbag, and after a hundred pages or so I just wished someone would throttle him. What killed this book for me was that I just didn't care about Ignatius. I will try to reread this book in the next few months to see if my opinion has changed. If this book entertains you, great, its just didn't work for me.
Rating: 
Summary: "Oh, my valve!"
Review: Ignatius Riley is one of the greatest characters in all of literature. His constant complaining about everything (from his valve to Myrna Minkoff) had me laughing almost to the point of insanity! Fabulous book. I would recommend this book to anyone whose quest is to readd al great American literature.
Rating: 
Summary: What an absolute utter WASTE
Review: I'm surprised anyone would publish such moronic work It's a stupid inane story about an obnoxious, arrogant 30 year old fat slob who lives with his ignorant dimwit mother. OK, but they didn't do anything! I mean, what was the point. It's suppose to be funny (so say the majority below) but is only disgustingly retarded & brainless, witless drivel. What a waste of trees and every thing else.
Rating:
Summary: LAUGH UNTIL YOU CAN'T BREATH
Review: If you love intelligent humor that holds something new at each reading then you MUST NOT PASS UP THIS OPPORTUNITY. Quite possibly the funniest book I have ever read. Brimming with oddball characters of every description and scenarios beyond belief this book is the Mona Lisa of humorous literature. Uproarously hilarious! The tragedy is that Mr. Toole's literary career was cut short by his untimely death.
Rating:
Summary: Probably the best gift he ever gave me...
Review: My father,after a visit to New Orleans, gave me this book about 16 years ago.Probably the best gift he ever gave me.I have continued to read it over the years.It grabbed me the first time and has never realeased its grip on me. It has altered the way I look at the world. It taught me to revel in life's absurdities and not to be frightened by them.This book proves that political correctness sanitizes the world in ways that strip us of our intellect. When people who share the common experience of having read this book meet,it never fails to ignite,at the very least,a spirited conversation if not outright friendship. I do not recommend this book to people...I simply present it to them.I keep a supply on hand and find great pleasure in being the catalyst for those who take up the challenge and embark on this magnificently unique and hilarious journey. I lay down a gauntlet...Read it and LAUGH! Warning: Hazardous if read in public.May cause uncontrollable fits of hysteria.
Rating:
Summary: What a hoot!
Review: This book is hilarious - a must read! The first time I read it, I couldn't help laughing out loud. If you just need something that's fun to read, this book is it!
Rating:
Summary: Ooo-Wee
Review: This book is the most amazing piece of fiction I have ever read. The characters have such depth. You will remember each and everyone of them. I didn't want the story to end! I was saddened to have gotten to the last page. What, not another 400pages of pure entertainment? I will say, I found little funny outside of Igatius' riotious ramblings. Instead, I found it to be a tragic story.
Rating:
Summary: Excelente novela
Review: La trama, los personajes, las escenas...realmente digna de admiración. Divertidisima y al mismo tiempo tremendamente condenatoria a la ya antigua degeneración de la sociedad. Definitivamente 5 estrellas.
Rating:
Summary: Funniest book ever written
Review: Struck up a conversation with a fellow reader at a Half-Price Book Store one day - he asked "Do you want to know what the funniest book I ever read was?" and I answered "A Confederacy of Dunces." His jaw dropped and he asked "How did you know that?" and I answered, "Because it's the funniest book I ever read!" Truly, it is. And you don't have to be from New Orleans to think so (although it doesn't hurt)!
Rating:
Summary: What's This?
Review: That little mysterious box that pops up at the wrong time, while you're typing a note for eternity in your journal--well, "what's this"? That happened to my brain, while reading this book. It was purplexing and inescapable. The book is propelled at a frantic pace, with an almost manic urgency, until it ends, winding down, until one hopes that the author can get some sleep. The rapid movement is good, because there is no plot to further puzzle us. I missed this book, when the original hoopla occurred--don't know how; I was reading "Earthly Powers" and Dorothy Sayers and Barbara Pym, so that I could better understand my dislike of Episcopalians. Here, however, the question is where is the satire? I was expecting a modern Swift or Voltaire. Instead, I get a work, where the anger is palpable in every word. Toole can't be poking fun at purple prose, because this may the best in the English language. It''s just too good, but here's the other problem. Toole loses aesthetic distance. One is never sure whether it is Toole, being omnipotent or Ignatius, writing well. I did laugh a couple of times at a well placed witticism or a character foible that would appear from nowhere. Off the top of my head, I think of some other contemporary suicides, Diane Arbus in photography, Jerzy Kosinski, Ernest Hemingway, Sylvia Plath . . . All were commensurate craftspersons, like the composer, Salieri(boring!) They share something else in common, an unfathomable hoplessness and a naive kind of nihilism, which in Hemingway, I admired as teenager, as in "A Clean Well-Lighted Place." When Ghandi was asked what he thought of Western Civilization? He replied, "I think it would be a good idea." Civilization may have ended, after we dropped the bomb and really disappear, whenever we do a Hitler, as in Cambodia or Yugoslavia, or Northern Ireland, or Rwanda . . . My own poetry often makes Plath's appear cheerful, but mine is therapy. The problem with these peoples' nihilism is that it will kill you.
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