Rating: 
Summary: Great characters but ultimately boring
Review: Ummmm, I think I have mixed feelings about this book, and it seems I am one of the few people who neither worship it nor hate it. I really enjoyed the originality of the setting, the bizarre characters and Ignatius Reilly, what a riot! His dialogue is absolutely sharp and hilarious, we have to give credit to the author for this. And Ms. Trixie, ooohhhh!!! My favourite character of the novel, no doubt! But somehow the story lacks a plot, and Ignatius's ramblings become derivative far too early into the book. I'm sure I appreciated the humour and sarcasm in the story, but a better developed plot would have given it five stars.
Rating: 
Summary: The Bible of Comedy
Review: "A Confederacy of Dunces" is not even questionably the greatest novel ever written in the realm of comedy. It's not an attempt at greatness, not a shingle thrown at the moon - it's the kind of thing that you read and have this tremendous pang. This sadness that you never get in a book - you know it has to end at some point and that's by far the worst realization. The only bad thing here is that it ends at all.What JK Toole accomplished here is beyond reason. What's worse is that you read it and know the pain he had in not seeing it heralded in every bookstore in his lifetime. Toole's rash and sad decision to end his own life is the best argument against suicide I know of. This man was a genius beyond anything we have now. He lacked the faith and certainty of that. The result is that we were robbed of such a possible body of work that the world will never know. The only close comparison is that of Keats whose "name writ in water" was a tragedy to a literate generation of his time. As gigantic and lush as "Confederacy.." is you never put that aside. That said, this is a Sheherazade of a tale. I suspect that Toole had no idea what he was planning for Ignatius, but that he wrote it as he found it. And what a formula. From the Big Chief tablets to the hot dog cart this is a book that has no equal. It sits in my bathroom rack of books and I just pick it up and read a page and laugh. It's THAT good. Every page is a mystery of writing skill, Toole's characters are vibrant and fully alive always, none resembling the other and they sing when they get going which is immediately. Reading this means you will never be the same. "The Night of Joy" bar will be a place you want to get a drink, Constantinople a word you actually use. More than anything, you'll be lucky. There's not a thing like this book - nothing even close. Oddly I just read Jon Stewart's "Naked Pictures of Famous People" which was heralded on cover and by friends as "hilarious." Please. I don't know how he made a career.... Idiocy in the aught years is heralded as funny. Not likely. Read this book and realize how we have since the late 1950's when this was written, devolved into a true "Confederacy of Dunces". The book means more today than it ever did.
Rating: 
Summary: too long, not funny as hyped to be
Review: Three quarters into the book I wished I hadn't spent the time reading it. It was fatiguing to read the same arguement over and over, nothing new develops about the characters, nothing made me want to finish. I skimmed the last one quarter. Maybe East Coast intellectuals can laugh at the antics of those silly southerners but here in the Northwest I prefer my humor more dry.
Rating: 
Summary: Truly funny, with real if unfortunate characters
Review: Truly funny, you will laugh at the situations and odd twists to this story. Easy to read, even if a little choppy at the end. I can appreciate that ending this tale was not easy!
Rating:
Summary: Slapstick with a long, protracted slap
Review: Was this book funny? Yes, at times, it was outright hilarious. Other times, it strained, falling flat on its face -- but most often it wasn't enough to elicit a reaction either way. The book read to me like an old slapstick film -- Laurel & Hardy or the Three Stooges -- full of a lot of physical humor, some cheap shots and some Rube Goldbergian interactions between the characters. This isn't to disparage it -- I like these films for what they are, and thought that if used well, the use of these "low brow" influences *could* have made for a really interesting work. But it didn't, and that's what's so disappointing about it. The problem is that there are so few ideas, and what themes it contains are so disordered, that the work ends up saying very little. Much of the first three quarters of the novel felt, to me, like setting up all the pieces in an elaborate game of "Mouse Trap," quirky characters each with their own peculiar motivations put in situations that would bring them closer and closer together, but when the ball was dropped and one thing tripped another, which tripped another, I found myself saying, well... was that it? Though a fast read -- the 400+ pages are deceptively quick -- the book would have benefitted had the author had the opportunity to pare it down and streamline it. The intro is right, Toole has a great ear for the voices of the characters in his novel -- but the book has its fair share of awkward, even poor, writing.
Rating:
Summary: 10 STARS IS NOT ENOUGH!
Review: This is the funniest book I have ever read in my life! Ignatius is stupendous, in more ways than one! An intellecutal trapped within the confines of his own body and an evironment he cannot escape (his "valve" won't allow it!) The cast of characters includes some of the zaniest people you will ever be introduced to. How Toole manages to incorporate these diverse individuals, introduced to us one by one in sub-plots, and leads them on his merry, maniacal way into the most hilarious finale imaginable is sheer comic genius. I've read this book many times and I can guaranty you that you won't be satisfied with just one reading either. Sadly, Toole committed suicide before this book had even been published. In fact, he, himself, never did attempt to do so. After his death, his Mother took a moth-eaten manuscript she found among his effects to an individual . . . and the rest is posthumous Pulitzer Prize history. Had Toole lived, Ignatius had been set up for the sequel to end all sequels. Alas, it is not to be. All the more reason for you to buy this book and cherish what the author has given us. Warning: Do not read this book while standing up - it is that much farther from the floor, where you will also immediately find yourself rolling in laughter.
Rating:
Summary: Very funny piece of good literature
Review: Confederacy of Dunces is laugh-out-loud funny. It also has some of the best-written characters I have read, although the portrayal of African-Americans is rather dated. The story line winds around a series of absurd situations that lampoons a whole swath of society, from intellectuals to criminals and law enforcement, as well as many of the ideas coming into fashion at that time. Absolutely Delightful!
Rating:
Summary: funny enough, but a mess
Review: When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him. -Jonathan Swift, Thoughts on Various Subjects, Moral and Diverting There's always a danger, when the story of a book's publication or an author's biography is really compelling, that our natural fascination with the background elements will effect how we judge the novel itself. I believe John Kennedy Toole's very funny, but badly flawed, Confederacy of Dunces, to be an instance where this happened. For anyone not familiar with the circumstances surrounding the book, Toole's mother, Thelma, pestered Walker Percy until he consented to read her dead son's "great" novel. Percy, to his great surprise, found the huge manuscript, which was presented to him on badly smeared carbon paper, compulsively readable. As it turned out, Toole had committed suicide in 1969, and his frustration at his inability to get the book published may have been a contributing factor; at least, such a supposition makes for an even better story. Percy helped to get the book published, by the Louisiana State University Press, and it went on to become a surprise best seller and won a posthumous, by 12 years, Pulitzer Prize. The novel tells the story of thirty year old Ignatius J. Reilly of New Orleans, an eccentric medievalist, living at home with his mother, whom he torments, and of his one man war against modernity. Ignatius, who is an undeniably original comic creation, is a hugely fat bundle of body functions, paranoia and obsessions, topped with a green hunting cap, who spends all of his considerable free time eating, attending movies, and locked in his disgusting room committing his various demented thoughts to his stacks of Big Chief writing tablets. The story opens with Ignatius being arrested by the hapless Patrolman Mancuso, an arrest which soon goes awry and sends Ignatius and his mother in search of liquid comfort, which they find at the Night of Joy bar. While Mrs. Reilly tipples, Ignatius regales her and various dumbfounded listeners with the story of his ill-fated trip to Baton Rouge aboard a Greyhound Scenicruiser for a job interview, a trip which was apparently so traumatic that it has kept him from working ever since. But later that night Mrs. Reilly backs into another car and in order to pay for the damages Ignatius is forced to seek work. The misanthrope, turned loose on the work a day world, proceeds to do hilarious damage to various employers, coworkers and customers, while using his experiences as the basis for a memoir titled : The Journal of a Working Boy, or, Up from Sloth. His misadventures at Levy Pants are particularly funny, as he sends abusive letters to clients and tries leading a revolt by the firm's largely black workforce, marching beneath a banner, actually one of his badly stained bedsheets, declaring the "Crusade for Moorish Dignity." From there he goes on to a job as a hot dog vendor, an attempt to found a new political party, and all the while carries out bitter vendettas against his mother, Patrolman Mancuso, and Myrna Minkoff, a supposed girlfriend from college. All of this is quite funny, but at the same time it's fairly easy to see why it was not considered publishable. In the first place it is much too long and loses its focus as it goes along, before rallying at the end. Secondly, Ignatius, though amusing, is just too far over the top to command our sympathies. His fascination with body functions and his erotic dreams of a departed pet collie are less shocking now, when even Disney movies are filled with fart jokes, than they were twenty and thirty years ago, but it still gets to be a little much. Lastly, and most importantly, Ignatius is so screwed up himself, and his various screeds are so contradictory, that his general opposition to the modern age, which could have served as a badly needed unifying theme for the whole novel, and have given it some intellectual heft, ends up being pretty incoherent and hypocritical. A great novel might well have been made out of these raw materials, had Toole lived and a good editor gotten ahold of him. But we'll never know. What we have instead is a very amusing, sometimes even laugh-out-loud-funny book, which adds up to less than the sum of its parts. The tragic fact that a talented author killed himself before he could make the changes necessary to turn this into a first rate novel should neither diminish, nor make us overstate, what he did achieve. GRADE : B
Rating:
Summary: One of the three funniest books ever published.
Review: One of only three books that have made me laugh out loud. The sad fate of John Kennedy Toole adds to the aura surrounding this masterpiece of modern American literature. Why hasn't this been made into a movie? Perhaps because Fellini's dead?
Rating:
Summary: Full of ludicrous situations
Review: I'm still not sure what to make of "A Confederacy of Dunces." I read it in part because it won the Pulitzer and in part because a reviewer compared "To Say Nothing of the Dog" (a favorite novel of mine) to it. This book has nothing in common with To Say Nothing of the Dog; and I don't know what makes A Confederacy of Dunces (or any book) win the Pulitzer. The main character, Ignatius J. Reilly, is articulate. That is about the only thing he has going for him. He is rude, obese, condescending, masochistic, disgusting and deluded. Believing himself better than everyone and everything he comes across, Ignatius finds himself in a series of odd situations. He sees every movie that comes out, only to shout at the screen "What is this filmed abortion?!" His "valve" closes and causes bloating every time he is faced with something he doesn't like (which is all the time). Ignatius' long-suffering mother tells him to find a job. Despite his odd Oedipal attachment (he is 30 and still lives with his mom), Ignatius screams that she should be lashed for such a suggestion. His first job is at the failing Levy Pants, to do filing. He spends his time creating signs and crosses from cardboard and "files" papers into the garbage. Ignatius' second job is as a hot-dog vendor; he refuses to sell them and eats them all himself. He writes diatribes about the world around him, and progressively gets more and more crazed. His rude, articulate speeches are hilarious in his delusion of self-importance. "A Confederacy of Dunces" is filled with other crazed characters: Ignatius' mother, a policeman forced to go undercover in silly disguises, the ancient Miss Trixie and a professor who doesn't quite seem to fit in to the story. As someone else noted, several characters rely on out-dated stereotypes (a gay man and a black man). This, unfortunately, detracts from otherwise fascinating charaterization. All the characters are linked by Ignatius -- and the complete havoc he wreaks on their lives. Everything Ignatius leaves in his wake comes crashing together in the end. Was this book well-written? Definitely. Was it fast-paced and interesting? Yes. Was it funny, witty and sarcastic? Yes. My only problem is that it's difficult to separate my feelings toward Ignatius from my feelings toward the book. I couldn't stand Ignatius. John Kennedy Toole did a brilliant job creating Ignatius (someone so preposterous yet so believable). Ignatius made me groan and laugh at the same time. I loved the characterization, but I hated Ignatius.
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