A Confederacy of Dunces

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Summary: Everyone I Know Who's Read this Book Has Loved It!
Review: I was astonished to see that anyone has given this book a bad review. It's so funny, I laughed until tears rolled out of my eyes. Fifteen years after I first read it, I still give copies as Christmas presents.

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Summary: modern classic
Review: I loved this book. My reasons? Too many to get into; besides, others have covered them. A work of genius--and that's exactly what the author John Kennedy Toole was in my humble opinion. Too bad he isn't around to see how many people admire and respect this incredible creation of his. His name lives on in his work. As far as the rare negative response here and there:I say too bad for them, because they just don't get it, the same way some people don't get jazz (the greatest music ever invented). It's their loss. Pick up a copy, or give one to a friend. I had to give it five stars. 'Nuff said, as Stan "The Man" Lee used to say.

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Summary: Don't believe the hype. Well, believe some of it.
Review: One thing must be made perfectly clear from the start -- this is an extremely fun book to read. It's funny, it's paced well; it's a terrific summer read. That said, however, I don't think this is quite the Great American Novel the critics have declared it to be. My suspicion is that many of them are more excited about HOW it came to be than WHAT it came to be. Just as music critics dream of breaking some obscure-but-magical band they just happened to hear in a small-town bar, this work -- written by a talented-but-troubled young man, forgotten for years after his suicide, discovered by his mother is some musty cabinet, dropped on the desk of a skeptical English professor, begrudgingly read, then found to be a masterpiece -- proved too tempting; it's TOO perfect. So go into this knowing that the book's legacy probably has as much to with its lavish praise as its content.

I found the book to be a bit like a kiddie pool -- colorful, fun, inviting, but, while broad enough to hold many characters, ultimately very shallow. Certainly, many of the characters were given magnificent, hilarious dialogue (although Burma's constant "Hey!"s and "Whoa!"s baffled me; was he being shot at, did he have Tourette's?), but they weren't given much life; we never got to know them. Miss Trixie, Lana Lee and Mrs. Levy, for instance, were given a hook line and esentially repeated it ad nauseum for the rest of the novel. And once the roster was divided into good guys and bad guys, the book marched on to a fairly predictable end.

Even our enormous, over-educated, cripplingly neurotic, eternally belching anti-hero Ignatius was ultimately little more than a vehicle for Toole's amazing monologues. While we were given tiny glimpses of his humanity, an awful high school experience, his heartbreak over his departed dog, his secret love for the movies, we never learned what made him tick. WHY was he so rabidly averse to sex, obsessed with pre-Renaisannce history, undermotivated and fearful? What in his childhood or college experience molded him, changed him?

That said, though, the book IS pretty darned funny and has some of the most twisted twists ever. Ignatius' near-success in organizing a full-blown religious crusade with a pack of bemused, semi-literate factory workers had me rolling, and his, er... unique plan to inflitrate the armed forces to bring about a new era of world peace had to be one of the most hilariously fiendish concepts in recent memory -- it seemed as though it actually MIGHT work. All of the character plots tied together beautifully and, although their eventual outcomes are fairly obvious, the roads which led them there are anything but.

So know that this is not one of the greats, nor is there a Big Message, other than that desperate self-preservation will generally triumph over either secular humanism or staunch religious morality. Know also, though, that you will have a heck of a good time reading this. Perhaps not a leather-bound tome to be positioned among the classics in a college library, but a great addition to the pile of paperbacks in your rented beach house.

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Summary: Ignatius J. Reilly, the original "slacker"
Review: Ignatius Reilly was the original slacker back when this novel was written in the early sixties- before there was a name for it. It isn't that he just avoids work for it's own sake, it is just that he just doesn't have the time or patience for what the modern commercial world considers to be work. He has better things to do with his time. You see, Ignatius is a thoroughly medieval man. His is primarily an internal life grounded and centerered in "theology and geometry." According to these consistent standards, Ignatius' life, behavior, and appearance are perfectly rational and understandable. Unfortunately, Ignatius lives in mid-twentieth century America, a time and place of mind-numbing conformity, intolerance, and efficiency. He is doomed to perpetual misunderstanding and conflict.
That is the tragedy to this most excellent of commedies- being an intelligent misfit in a world of mind-numbing conformity. The author choose to leave it rather than conform, while Ignatius found the inner strength to fight and/or disreguard it. Neither let it possess and change them into modern mass-produced robots in the consumer society.....
I wish that I could give it 500 stars.

Rating:
Summary: hot dog anyone?
Review: John Kennedy Toole presents an eloquent, vibrant look into the life of a consummate educated slacker. The protagonist moves through the pages with nonchalance and the reader vicariously thrills to a life that says, "I am not putting up with hassles."

We get a real sense of the experientially rich city that is New Orleans, but with the amazingly diverse set of characters, it is fun to read in a city like New York.

It is definitely a tragedy to see yet another example of an artist with a real grasp of living lose his life so young.

Toole's legacy - this dynamic comedy opus - will remain.

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Summary: Geometrically and Theologically Stupendous
Review: We have seen the character of Ignatius J. Reilly before haven't we? Is he Don Quixote wandering the plains of Spain with Sancho Panza tagging along like the Cockatoo that pulls rings from a stripper's suit? Is he Huck Finn navigating the gothic waters of a South filled with disparate quirky characters and a whole host of preconceptions, misconceptions, and derelictions? Ignatius is all of these and more. The real genius of Toole's sprawling tragi-comedy "A Confederacy of Dunces" is the uniqueness of the main character and the cast of dunces at the fringes, the fringes of the tale and the fringes of society.

When people talk of this novel, they talk of its humor. I didn't find it rolling on the floor funny, like I have with books like "Catch-22", or parts of some of Don DeLillo's novels. But I did find several scenes so uncommonly placed together with an imaginative patchwork of human freakish delights that it couldn't help but place a tattoo on your brain. That's a little deeper than laughing sometimes. There's the "Night of Joy" bar where Jones rearranges the dust on the floor and the proprietress takes charitable donations for an orphanage (illicit racy picture ring in reality). There are the misguided political rallies that I.J. Reilly heads up at Levy pants and another for a drag queen party that turn out to be not more than Quixote swashbuckling a wooden sword at spinning windmill blades. The beauty is that people take part for the entertainment, for the diversion from boredom, for the fact of being human and reveling in Reilly's misguided idealism for kicks and grins.

To cap off the novel, for the ending there is an escape (not to give it away with details) with a little future hope thrown on top of all the mired downtrodden tragi-comedy we've come to know and love as Reilly journeys along searching for the right words to scrawl across the myriad of Big Chief tablets strewn across his medieval cave of a room. To give the author credit it becomes a suspenseful escape, one that we as readers care about and leaves us with some hopes. What more could you want in a novel? So from Myrna Minx, Miss Trixie, and Paradise Dogs, read on brothers and sisters, WHOA!!

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Summary: Comic Adventures in The Big Sleazy
Review: This may be the funniest novel ever written. I cannot understand how people do not see the humor in this great book. The characters are marvelously absurd; the setting in New Orleans is perfect; and the writing is superb -- every word seems to be in the right place. It is such a tragedy to realize that the author did not live to see the success of this comic masterpiece.

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Summary: THE ANTI-HERO PAR EXCELLENCE
Review: Initially, one is tempted to regard the protagonist Ignatius as a vile, offensive slob, but as you continue, you come to admire him for his gall, his meanness, his bloated self-confidence and his overwhelming self-righteousness. The plaisir du texte is of course, enhanced by the wonderful interweaving web of plot and subplots, and by the colourful array of characters. This is one of those rare novels that becomes so addictive that you compulsively read on between the fits of hysterical laughter. Not one word is unnecessary, not once sentence is superfluous. It is in fact, absolutely brilliant and for someone like myself who has no intention of reading Rabelais or Cervantes, it is sufficient. I recommend it also as a very effective cure for depression.

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Summary: It's easy to see how this book won a Pulitzer!
Review: There were 519 other reviews posted before I wrote this one here, and in those you will find all you need to know about the author, the lead character Ignatius, and the setting in 1960s New Orleans. Having just finished reading it, I'll try instead to discuss the reasons why I found this book one of the most enjoyable I've ever read (and I read a lot!).

First, it's funny, very very funny. The writing has a sharp sarcastic wit to it, and the author weaves his take on the human condition expertly through the plot scenes, and makes great use of his characters' dialog and actions.

Secondly, all of the characters are very well-developed, and it's quite easy to see them, to hear them, and to get a good feel for what their inner motivations are---no small feat since there are several characters sharing the stage with Ignatius throughout the book.

Also, the plotline is actually several storylines moving forward simultaneously towards a single converging point at the book's climax. Each of the lesser characters' futures has a stake in the future of Ignatius (the lead) as the book careens to its finish line. The bringing together of all these separate agendas was masterfully done. I disagree with the previous reviewer's opinion that the ending wasn't up to snuff. I was happy to see that the book ended the way I wanted it to, given my 400+ page investment up to that point.

A rich delightful book.

Rating:
Summary: a confederacy of yawns
Review: Why on earth does anyone think this book is funny? B-O-R-I-N-G!