Rating: 
Summary: A true original
Review: I must admit: I have never read a book like Toole's Confederacy of Dunces, or encounted anything like its protagonist, Ignatius J. Reilly. Though I felt the second half of the book dragged somewhat, there are few books that have made me laugh so heartily so often as this one. The book is simultaneously philosophical reflection and a sprawling, intertwined comedic masterpiece. The characters are truely original, the diversionary plots pure madcap, and the ending is perfect. A great summer read.
Rating:
Summary: Come possiamo non amare Ignatius J. Reilly?
Review: Centinaia di recensioni in inglese, per questo libro scombiccherato ma perfetto (o viceversa), e una media eccellente (4 e mezzo su cinque). Allora e' il caso di rivolgersi agli amici italiani. Cominciate dall'inizio, per favore. Dalla scena in cui Ignatius fa' la fila assieme alla madre. Vi si apre davanti un mondo nuovo, fatto di pensieri lucidissimi ma, come dire, sconvenienti. Non e' un folle, quello che abbiamo di fronte, un imbarazzante grassissimo folle scoreggiante (ahimè, fa anche di questo!), è semplicemente un uomo che non fa sconti a nessuno e troneggia su un egoismo perfino commovente...ma tutto ciò non è forse ciò che potremmo osservare in gran parte dei nostri simili? Forse sono meno inclini alle flatulenze, tutto qui... Pertanto, il mondo offerto dal libro è nuovo solo perche' non l'abbiamo mai visto così, ma è proprio quello che attraversiamo ogni giorno. Solo, abbiamo - in genere - visioni meno radicali di Ignatius. Il libro tocca punte di comicità piacevolissima, pian piano le assurdità che propone ci sembrano però...meno irragionevoli. Ha ragione, Ignatius, a restare quel che è? O per farsi amare, accettare, per inserirsi - problema che avvertiamo solo noi, osservandolo all'opera, perchè lui ha sempre ragione! - dovrebbe rinunciare ad una delle sue mille sgradevolezze? Ora io ricordo una storiella: un uomo guida la sua auto e sente alla radio un allarme "attenzione, si avvisano gli automobilisti che un pazzo sta percorrendo l'autostrada in senso contrario!" l'uomo spegne la radio con aria infastidita e commenta "see, uno, sono migliaia!". Che dovrebbe fare Ignatius, allora, darla vinta a quella banda di idioti? Epperò mai avrei pensato che quell'automobilista pericoloso mi avrebbe tanto intenerito...qui a mio avviso emerge la maestria di J.K.Toole: quasi spiamo Ignatius mentre sta da solo (è sempre solo, dannazione!), sistema le sue cose, i suoi fogli bisunti in cui riscrive la storia del mondo partendo, guarda caso, da ciò che più lontano si pone rispetto alla nostra luminossissima modernità...l'oscuro Medioevo! ed è così affettuoso con le proprie cose, con le proprie fissazioni...un bambino, davvero, che si chiude da solo nella stanza dei tesori... Non so se è solo bravura, quella di Toole, o se c'è qualcos'altro che gli permetta di farci alla fine commuovere per il suo magnifico e ributtante personaggio...non so, mi viene in mente un'altra madre, quella di Toole stesso, che per anni si presentava a scrittori ed esperti di scrittura per sottoporre il manoscritto del figlio morto suicida, un ammasso di fogli bisunti, appunto...fino a trovare chi sapesse finalmente leggerlo e farlo arrivare a noi. Grazie, signora Toole, ha fatto bene ad essere ostinata come suo figlio Ignatius, anzi Kennedy, ha fatto bene a non arrendersi a quella banda di idioti!
Rating: 
Summary: A masterful job of describing the delusional
Review: As if there weren't enough reviews of this book, I'll add mine: In a word, wonderful. The "protagonist" is one Ignatius J. Reilly, a fat, pompus windbag who is over-educated, but refuses to work, preferring to stay home and drive his mother nuts while writing his never-ending treastie on the awfulness of the modern world -- "modern" meaning anything since early Medieval times! Thanks to his mother running into a building while under the influence, Ignacious has to go to work. You can just about imagine the kind of worker he is, versus the kind of worker he really is! You wouldn't want to leave this guy alone with a typewriter, or even a hot-dog cart, for a minute. John Kennedy Toole does not just depict Ignatius's delusions, but brilliantly depicts everyone else's delusions, too. His novel shows us that none of us operate in a concrete reality -- our perceptions are deluded because of our beliefs, worldview, past experiences, etc. This book should be assigned, or at least recommended, reading for any college course dealing with post-Modern thought.
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant! Just plain brilliant!
Review: Like the best of art, this is a book that can be enjoyed on a low-level pure-entainment level, and can be enjoyed at five stars. But it is also that great art kind of book that can be enjoyed at whatever high level you might like - this is fantastic literature that be deconstructed, critiqued, torn apart, and otherwise delved into to find layers and layers and layers of life meaning in it. What's the highest level/compliment any piece of artwork can achieve? That it either entertained me greatly, or that it changed my life in some way. This book works on both levels. I read a lot on the subway, since I get about an hour a day riding the rails of NYC, and I read this book mostly on the 1/9 line. Even though this is a public space, I laghed out loud numerous times. Some of this book is just plain outrageously funny - the gut-crunching painful kind of laughter-inducing humor of Gallagher, Toy Story 2, or the Beavis and Butthead movie. But other parts of the book are full of emotion and ennui - the main character of the book is not altogether psychologically with-it, but yet, he has a profound and honest insight into a lot of the supidity and cultural BS and killing-oneself-and-one's-world behavior that so many "sane" people go after - consumerism, nationalism, idealism, ego gratification, etc. And that's the genius of the book - a very intelligent "hero" who is also a fat, lazy, neurotic can't-hold-a-job still-living-with-mom loser. I hate to say anything more, because I hate reviews that tell the story of the book but never comment on the story and thus ruin all the fun for the reader. I can't begin to tell you how much I love this book, and how often while I was reading it that I said to people "YOU HAVE TO READ THIS BOOK!!" What more do I need to say? Read this book! It should be in the library of everyone, and is one of those rare books that I really wish everyone in the country would read. We'd be a better society if everyone knew it. But alas, 98% of Americans prefer crap to well-written thinking literature, so this pulitzer winning book is forever relgated to the bowels of the used bookstores. Shame on you America, and kudos to those of you who will actually be intelligent to take this book into your hands and let it change you.
Rating:
Summary: trailer trash Don Quixote
Review: This book is a combination of slapstick and the driest humor imaginable. It's a "Spinal Tap" for the well read and over-educated.
Rating:
Summary: Yes, it is that good
Review: To respond to some of the less than enthusiastic responses to this novel, to each his own. But it is very difficult to understand how anyone can read this masterpiece and not laugh out loud. It is that funny. No book before or since has been able to capture the dialogue and situations that Toole did. It is a shame he took his own life, but he left behind some of the best writings in American history. Im very serious. This is a comic masterpiece is every way.
Rating: 
Summary: Did I really read the same book as these other people?
Review: Based on the reviews contianed at this web site, I bought this book as a summer read. While the characters are fascinating, the humor is practically non-existant. It seems that this book has become a sort-of "cult classic". And like most cult classics, it's really not as good as most people make it out to be. I mean, is the Rocky Horror Picture Show that good? No. But it is a cult classic. There are indeed some colorful characters in the French Quarter and in this book, and Toole captures their idiosyncratic behavior pretty well. And he does an exceptional job of capturing the language spoken by the locals. But to call this collection of semi-humorous vignettes a comic masterpiece is a cruel hoax on readers. In my opinion, this is another example of a person becoming famous for his work by dying, preferably in a tragic (Toole commited suicide) way. To qoute another reviewer, "This is an example of how a nondescript work can become so inflated by the great American hype-machine as to finally emerge as some sort of accepted masterwork, never to be equalled, unparalleled. I'm surprised Toole wasn't posthumously awarded the Nobel as well." Fortunately, the Nobel prize is never awarded posthumously.
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Summary: My Favorite Book
Review: This book is fantastically funny. It gets funnier every time you read it. It is a serious shame that this writer only put out two books. I find myself ready for more of his books, but unfortunately he is gone.
Rating:
Summary: Not what I expected, but fun(ny) nonetheless.
Review: This book was recommended to me by a highly intelligent person who previously had turned me on to "Atlas Shrugged" and "the Fountainhead." So when she told me about a novel entitled "A Confederacy of Dunces," I envisioned the story of a rugged, heroic individualist's trek to find worthy comrades in the world. This thought was reinforced by the Jonathan Swift quote on the opening cover page- "When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign- that the dunces are all in confederacy against him." Was I ever shocked to discover that this "genius" would be Ignatius J. Reilly, scumbag-at-large- and that the whole book is merely a play on the hero theme and a delve into the psyche of a man who believes himself to be misunderstood, but who is in fact just a loser. Ignatius Reilly is an overeducated, underworked, completely unhygienic slob whose musings about the world and arcane references to the Fortuna-worshipping, Roman chronicler/philosopher Boethius underscore his superiority complex. Graduate school has not prepared Ignatius very well for the job market, and his main purpose in life is to earn just enough money to a) keep his mother off his back (he gets his first job at age 30) and b) pay admission to the movies so that he can jeer the latest Debbie Reynolds flick. Of course, the world of employment will also prove to be a treasure chest of material for Ignatius's treatise on the history of the world (whose thesis is that we were better off as medieval serfs), a work which will finally vanquish his nemesis (or is she?), the hippie Myrna Minkoff. The workplace misadventures are wilder than any I've heard in life and hysterically funny... you may never trust the new employee with your filing again. Also, I always take a second look at the Shea Stadium hotdog vendors before buying one these days. Jones made me crack up, and Miss Trixie is hilarious, especially in that I once worked with a woman who must be her twin sister, separated at birth. Say what you want about the book's candidacy as a literary classic, but it made me laugh (out loud, and in a public place), made me think, and drew me in deeply enough to constantly curse at Mrs. Levy, the woman who thinks that enrolling in (and failing) a correspondence course in psychology qualifies her as an expert on human behavior. Overall, it's a good book which I will read again. I recommend it to anyone with enough intelligence to realize that humor can still be very funny without being highbrow.
Rating:
Summary: Exceptionally written comical genius...
Review: John Kennedy Toole killed himself because nobody would publish this book. His efforts had gone unnoticed, thought he; he was a failure. History proves him wrong, as we have seen A Confederacy of Dunces go on to win the Pulitzer and has reached and entertained countless readers. The book itself is sheer genius, as was the man behind it. There is not a moment where this book lags. Every sentence keeps popping fresh bubbles. The imagery is hilarious and the word choice and sentence structure is exquisite! Some parts of the book make you laugh outright at the sheer insanity of the writer's humor. The characters seem to come alive as you read. Ignatius Reilly is a 300 lb. lovable goof who lives with his mother. Throughout the book, we see him combatting every thing and every person he encounters. He is a martyr to non-conformity and to his ego. Very set in his ways, he goes from job to job, angering people to the point of insanity! Yet, he simply doesn't care. His poor mother! All you think about during this book is what will Ignatius do next? John Kennedy Toole was a also martyr, not only to his art but, like Ignatius Reilly, also to his own ego. He breathed life into his characters and it was too much for him to bear that nobody could see them alive and performing right before our very eyes, and so the tragedy occured which planted the seed for a generation of readers to harvest his great humor and style. While he is not alive to reap the benefits he so desired, the book is a gift to a multitude of readers. One can only hope that the John Kennedy Toole's of today are not overlooked.
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