Rating: 
Summary: Toole Should've Waited Around a Bit
Review: This book was one of those few to make me laugh out loud until I was crying - the sheer lunacy of this character is absolutely fascinating. Ignatius is the personification of the obnoxiousness that resides in all of us, and Toole's carefully crafted words paint a vivid picture of New Orleans, Levy Pants, and his mother's house. His letters to the Minx are somewhat tedious, but humouress nonetheless, his descriptions unique, apt, and crass. It broke my heart to think of this book's creator defeated by rejection, and missing the celebration of this wonderful book.
Rating: 
Summary: A uniquely American tragicomic masterpiece!
Review: I know I'm just adding to the heap, but, as this is one of my favorite books of all time, I have to comment. Toole has mercilessly caricatured nearly everyone and everything in his book, giving thereader an exaggerated, but palpable picture of New Orleans'neighborhoods, with neighbors in residence.
Hilarious? You bet! But it is hilarity based on poignancy. Each new episode that the pompous but pitiable Ignatius embarks on brings its varieties of sad sacks. Yet you cannot help but laugh. And laugh. But you know, each time I re-read it, I have to go buy some hot dogs...
Rating:
Summary: What the Pulitzer is all about
Review: I received this book some 10 years ago as a gift and have since bought 8 copies and given them as gifts with the note..."If one ever wondered what it takes to be awarded the Pulitzer..." Ignatius' pompous arrogance and amoral naivite never cease to amuse and delight me and the fact that the characters come full circle bringing otherwise unrelated people into contact is magic. My most recent gift of the novel, just last week,had me attempting to read just the first two pages to a friend and I couldn't complete even one without breaking up. Highly recommended for those who like to laugh out loud and don't care who hears.
Rating:
Summary: Humor-driven, scathing sociological commentary
Review: My wife is used to it: I start working on my car, and I begin laughing. Valves! Toole has the gift of taking the mundane and elevating it to the hysterical. He manipulates humor in ways that are both obvious and subtle at once: the workers trying to carry Ignatius while they strike, for example, make us laugh as we picture this possibility; the character "Dorian Greene" makes as laugh as we complete the subtle reference. Dorain GREENE!!! While the book always puts me in stitches, I find it somehow awfully depressing. In the end, Toole seems to tell us that only those who are the most out of touch with their surroundings and their objective realities are our true geniuses. The rest of us become the dunces in confederacy. I gave this book a ten because in addition to providing us with well-developed characters, a side-splitting tale, and an interesting setting, Toole uses those instruments to communicate that dismal prediction. It kills me that we don't have Toole around to entertain us further and expound on his theories about society. But then, I don't know Toole's personal history, and perhaps he felt besieged by a similar confederacy.
Rating:
Summary: A Defining Work
Review: Scan the numeric ratings given to this American literary masterpiece by the previous reviewers. No fives or sevens ... this is simply the best book you'll ever read ... or you'll hate it. Ignatius J. Reilly stirs readers passion like few figures before or after his creators untimely demise. Read this book.
Rating:
Summary: reapprasial
Review: You know, usually I wouldn't write a review like this, usually I wouldn't comment on anyone else's statements on a book, but hell, let's be honest: everyone who wrote anything about this book is either a benighted moron, or a cruel, vicious little person who gets off reading about other people's misery. Most of the reviews are great, raving and ranting about the book's excellence. yes, it's a good book. But it is also a very sad book. Most reviews talk about 'laugh out loud funny' and other cliched buzz phrases and it just doesn't apply to this book. Sure, you may laugh at something here or there within, crack a smile, a grin, a hearty, wicked chortle. But the book is about a fat, sick, crazy lunitic who's too smart and too paranoid and convinced that everyone in the world is out to get him. Not the basis for hilarity, is it. Sure, it could be made hilarious, with rampant exaggeration and skillfully making the character tremendously unlikeable, thereby changing the novel into a vicious comedy ripping this loser apart. But Toole clearly felt affection towards his character. He wanted things to turn out all right for him, but, based on his grounding the story in reality, that just didn't seem the way things should go. It is not a comedy. It is a tragedy with few moments of humor to lift the character's (and perhaps the reader's, but what writer really cares while writting a book what a general audience will think?)spirits or to give him a chance at laughing at himself and thereby restore some sense of humanity. As for the people angry and disappointed that they didn't find the book funny--don't listen to what people say about anything, chances are you'll disagree. Haven't you learned that by now?
Rating:
Summary: Have you peed recently? Better before you read this one!
Review: A true gut-buster. I laughed outloud through most of its pages, called friends on the phone to recite the funniest parts and have read it twice. The second time I broke down and bought it (I read mostly library books). Get it in hardback so it'll keep its shape after so many readings, and so many passing-along to friends and family.
Rating:
Summary: A review of A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES
Review: I am on my sixth pleasurable reading of this novel, and I still often refrain from reading it in public. I am still moved to hysterical laughter by much of the comedy in the book, and I am amazed at how timely the book remains even now in its 35th year, to our knowledge, of existence. I did my master's thesis on the sociolinguistic aspects of the novel. My thesis was, and remains six years later, that the more standard the speech of the character, the more non-standard, unorthodox, and downright crazy that character is. Ignatius himself is a grand example of just such a paradox, and Myrna (that saucy minx) is not far behind. Meanwhile, Irene, Santa, and Angelo, with their Gulf Southern Gulf Central dialect, are the "salt of the earth," who are not very smart, but are as good and genuine as any positive person you could hope to meet. And then there is Jones, whose Ebonics dialect is amazingly well captured by Toole. He is the character who, though with some flaws, makes a vital connection between the presence of Ignatius Jacques Reilly and real trouble. I love this book and I will always consider it my favorite novel because it is so lively that the characters quickly become old friends to you. I appreciate the plot twists and levels, and I am intrigued by the delicate mixture of the hilarious with the profane, the disgusting items with the episodes of genuinely sensitive moments. I am always amazed at Toole's awesome ability to mix various members of society as it was in New Orleans and have them come alive as non-stereotypical, believable, if artsy, characters. I will always regret that the circumstances of John Kennedy Toole's writing life did not work positively and happily for him in his lifetime. Still I am grateful to Thelma Toole for her persistence in getting the novel published.
Rating:
Summary: 101 Ways to Un-Clog Your Valve
Review: "A perfect 10? Really?" you ask. How could it not be? Look out really carefully when reading this book people! Even British comedy pales in comparison, with its intellectual humor and down-right-knee-slapping-clog-your-valve humor.
I must say that Jones is the most original character (and honest I must say) that I have seen in a while. From Jones' slander to his own culture to his constant fear of vagrancy, he entertains you until your face turns blue! And then comes Officer Mancuso -- what a turn of events! An officer that must go undercover in some of the zaniest outfits! Undercover? I think not. And oh, loe and behold, in walks Ignatius J. Reilly...Ooo-wee! An overgrown kid/adult that still lives with his ever-loving mother. Some of the situations that boy/man gets himself into, and good Lord! how he gets himself out! This one is a must read people!
Go out and find yourself a copy today, sit down, and get ready to laugh in a way that you've never laughed before! (and a small note to all you Ignatius fans...Don't be a Mongoloid!)
Rating:
Summary: Confederacy of Dunces
Review: The most hilarious novel written this century! I don't want to spend too much time explaining to disbelievers, but if you have a love for literature and characters that really stand apart from the rest, there is nothing quite like this read. Ignatius Reilly is an original delight. Please, please, PLEASE, do not miss this treasure.
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