A Confederacy of Dunces

Rating:
Summary: A "10" and "0"...all in the same book!
Review: I read the early reviews, then tried to read the book. I got angry after maybe 50 pages and threw it in a fire! The first and only book I ever burned. I felt manipulated and let down by the writer's postmodern refusal to give readers any reason to sympathize with characters. Then a couple years later I read it again and finished it. This time it was the funniest thing ever. It was so original. It has the oddest twists and some very deep holes. Comedy and tragedy are closer than we think. I came back because of a newfound love for outside artists and the unpublishable (Jack Saunders). Also, perhaps I like it so much better *in comparison to establishment books*. Sure, it's not the only wacky book, but it's just so accurate and wild. I liked the surprising unevenness, too. Maybe I also finally saw thru what real manipulation is like (the slick pros like Tom Robbins, Heinlein, Harrison, McGuane, Heller). I thought they were all fresh at first, then I realized they were often schticking with formula and cynicism. Toole was too far out for that. Toole hits formula over the head with a bat and I appreciate it. Others do too, but they have NO humility---Toole does pathetic like no one else. (His suicide was a great tragedy of our brown-nosing literary system, but I'm sure it's the same fate as most other attempts at honesty in a logrolling PC elitist cynical world.)

Rating:
Summary: You'll laugh so hard, your valve will close!
Review: From the opening paragraph, I was prepared to loathe Ignatius Reilly, the obese, pompus, over-educated, lute-playing sloth! After just a few pages of his hilarious mishaps, however, I was hooked. He and all the other lunatic characters made me laugh so hard while reading it on a plane that a flight attendant had to bring me a glass of water. Toole was a genius; who else could intertwine Ignatius among plot lines involving a bumbling rookie police officer, the heir to the Levy Pants empire, a sex-crazed activist, gays, bowlers, criminals, and sundry other kooks? You must read this book.

Rating:
Summary: This is the funniest book I've ever read
Review: Enough said. Buy this book and hang onto it for a very long time. Because you're gonna want to read it again and again. A masterpiece.

Rating:
Summary: Hideous.
Review: I enjoy farces when they reveal truths about life or if the characters arouse sympathy. I found none here. Toole's absurd whining grew tiresome quickly.

Rating:
Summary: Confederacy of Dunces portrays unique, believable characters
Review: This book was recommended as a "good read." Initially it seemed fatuous (pun intended) but after 20 pages I could not put it down. It shows a real, seamy side of New Orleans and real characters: the fat, spoiled, 30 year old Mama's boy, educated way beyond his common sense (if he had any). Yet his actions, philosophy, and intense emotional interaction with those around him ring true. A totally unique white whale, trying to swim upstream, but afraid to leave New Orleans. The Black vagrant is much more, and 3-dimensional, as are all others in the book.

Rating:
Summary: Read this book! You'll laugh, you'll weep!
Review: "A Confederacy of Dunces" was given to me as a gift. I was wary after reading the critical quotes on the cover proclaiming it "the funniest book you'll ever read!" Yeah, right, I thought. Feeling properly skeptical, I sat down to read. And read, and read. And then I started to laugh! By the last chapter, I was both laughing and weeping, and overcome with wonder at the brilliance, the oh-so-carefully plotted genius, of Toole's tale and his colorful characters. Never has critical opinion so UNDERSTATED the marvelous, entertaining quality of a work of fiction! Yes, New Orleans (and the rest of the world) have changed greatly in the thirty-odd years since this book was written, but that will not hold the reader back from stepping into that vanished, eccentric, delicious New Orleans that Toole conjures up so effortlessly. Igantius Reilly, his obstinately wacky anti-hero, well deserves a place among the truly unforgettable characters of Amercian Literature. The true trajedy of this novel is only that Toole, overcome by rejection and despair, killed himself before he could further enrich us with other creations as deeply satisfying and joyous as "A Confederacy of Dunces"!.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent! Highly recommended!
Review: I read the swedish translation of "A Confederacy of Dunces" the first time in 1982 - and many times since. Read it and learn about a "new" filing system and why it is OK to arrive late to work.

Rating:
Summary: A truly funny -- and sad -- work of literature
Review: Hilarious, poignant, sad, descriptive, beautifully written -- a work only a dunce could not find funny or touching. O'Toole's words and gift for characterization lift this marvelous book into the strata of great American novels like Huckleberry Finn and Catch-22. Ignatius J. Reilly is an obese, arrogant shut-in who launches verbal assaults at everyone and everything that offends his "world view." He finds plenty to criticize, and the scenes of him spewing articulate venom at misguided hot-dog buyers and others are small masterpieces. Another scene, of Ignatius trying to incite pant factory workers to strike (the stained sheet with Ignatius's handwritten strike message is pure genius) is worth the price of admission alone. For those who think that following the saga of a sad, poor, overweight loner is too depressing to be funny, think again. Such is O'Toole's writing prowess and gift for dialect that scene after scene delivers gusto humor entwined with tragic undercurrents. And, unlike O'Toole's own life, Ignatius's seems to turn out okay. The book's ending shows us that O'Toole had great affection for his ornery, chronically dispeptic creation. A great book indeed.

Rating:
Summary: Pure entertainment.
Review: The hilarioius misadventures of a 400 pound, medieval minded, sulking, pouting mama's boy living in New Orleans. The fun begins when an auto mishap forces him to leave the house and get a job. Ignatius Reilly, for that is his name, spreads chaos wherever he goes. One of the greatest comic novels ever written.

Rating:
Summary: Review of A Confederacy of Dunces, by John Kennedy Toole
Review: I am from New Orleans, a lifelong native and resident. I read this book when I was 19 years old (for the first time) and then just recently at my grand old age of thirty something. I remember the hype from the English Department at the University of New Orleans-the year was 1981 and I had to read the book for an English course. Constantly, over and over again, I heard what a great book this was, and I agreed-somewhat. My problem with the story back then was because it seemed like a masterpiece to me for the first few chapters, but then the plot bogged down in a mire of excessive sleaze. I have lived and worked in the French Quarter for several years, and I can say that the individuals who live on the fringe of society there are definately NOT like Toole's depiction of characters like Liz Steele or Betty Bumper, Dorian Green or Lana Lane. Toole is writing about an era that is today all but faded, an era of New Orleans rapidly descending into forgotten lore. The Irish Third Ward is today an inner city wasteland of decrepit houses and crumbling warehouses, and in the quarter, you are more likely to see characters from all over the country with a myriad of traits all differant from each other. The Quarter is a crowded, tight space today and the ghosts of the past are all leaving. But still, there are many still alive-the majority, I would think-who remember the old ways and crack a grin at this novel. But as a young man of 19 years, I thought it was mediocre at best because of the way Toole packed it with sleaze and what is now almost anachronisms, anachronisms that tend to remind me of my parents and grandparents, betraying the great promise the first few chapters displayed. Today, I am repulsed by the similarity between this book and William Faulkner's short story, " A Rose for Emily." The thematic similarity is clear; Toole's story takes place about the time Old New Orleans was starting to fade into the modern era of the Superdome, Poydras Street and the World's Fair. Faulkner's short story takes place near the end of the Old South. In both of these stories the images of decay are present. I am reminded that Toole is a southern writer, but his book is like a sad commentary on the often mentioned flight to the suburbs taken by many of the urban middle-class, a flight which began in the sixties, leaving mostly undesireables in the downtown area. I give this book a "6" because Toole uses very accurate dialogue and cultural referances, but the over-all impact of the novel is too weary; the sleaze fest becomes offensive.