Rating: 
Summary: The book is oddly enjoyable
Review: "Confederacy" is a book about odd people (and thereby begins to point out how "odd" we all really are). Each character has some habit that is different from the "norm" of society and the main character, Ignatius, is in a different universe all together (all the while thining that he is the very definition of what "normal" should be). If you enjoy books that are character studies that reveal exactly how odd this world is then you will enjoy "Confederacy". Imagine a Douglas Adam's book about New Orleans with an American versus British sense of humor and you'll begin to understand the beauty of this book.
Rating: 
Summary: a classic, but a bit outdated
Review: The publishing world has been shamelessly promoting this award winning book -- I enjoyed it, but I didn't think it was quite as much of a hoot as many critics must have. Sure, I laughed at Ignatius' over-active sphincter and his total loser personality, but after a few hundred pages of his manic thoughts, I begain to tire of him. yes, I think the book is a classic, but once you're over the main part of the story, I doubt you'll roll in the aisles laughing. Maybe I'm a heathen, but I laughed much more at every Dave Barry book.
Rating: 
Summary: That's what I like about the South!
Review: "You know I can't stand books about the South," I growled when my friend handed me "Dunces" as reverently as though he were giving me Aladdin's lamp. And indeed, I did always give up on books with a Southern locale and cast of characters. Until this one. It stands apart in every respect from those depressing Southern books. Written in sparkling modern prose, this is a serious book which is bursting with raw, zany humor. I didn't like the protagonist at first, but he grows on you. Very much like the hero of the currently popular serious/funny novel here on the West Coast, "Love Songs of the Tone-Deaf" by Asher Brauner, which is not only a very good book but also small enough for you to take along in your pack for a quick read on a plane or bus ride.
Rating:
Summary: Caveat Emptor:Highly Explosive!
Review: As a veteran bookworm, who cannot be easily dazzled by books any longer, I experienced my greatest literary shock ever reading this amazing book. Maybe it is indescribable but I will try to do it. I think Ignatius is one of the most grotesque characters of world literature. His queer logic, the originality of people around him and the maddening course of events transfixed me for eight hours successively. One hour of that reading took place in a waiting room and I laughed so much that they had to force me out. Some of them called me "a special kind of mad" loudly. The overlapping events and the intelligently woven web of plots and subplots make one think this is the product of a great genius. Beneath the grotesque face of the novel lies a great tragedy. A tragedy that is no less striking than the comedy. And the dexterity of Toole in creating that second dimension is the proof of his unique place among all writers. Reading this book is a special experience that urges you to share it with another one. I gave the first copy to my friends and it soon became a source of in-jokes, endless conversations and the formation of a sect-like circle of friends whose only mission is to proselytize the views of Ignatius. I wish I could read this book in English but alas I had to read its Turkish translation (itself a masterpiece). I terribly envy people whose native tongue is English and have the chance to understand the linguistic nuances fully. After all, even a good translation is not capable of giving the whole taste of the original text. The only sad thing is the heart-rending suicide of a literary genius dying an unjustly premature death. If only he could see that many people around the world adored his opus magnum.
Rating:
Summary: Absurd, but fun...
Review: ...I know someone like Ignatius. Some of my friends even say that I am like him. Naw, I'm no genius, nor do I pretend to be. This, my friends, is a good read. It is akin to Savannah's 'Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil' but in New Orleans, with hot dog stand laden street corners with characters too real to be imagined-- pullman/streetcar operators, barkeeps, the homeless, the drugged, the drunk and the old world Orleaners--come to life in this classic overlooked satire. I envy you if you're reading it for the first time!
Rating:
Summary: pulitzer prize winning comedy
Review: This is one of my favorite books, and my very favorite comedy. The tale is set in New Orleans, the characters are wonderfully flawed, and the author's style is unique. This novel won the Pulitzer prize for literature in the 1980's. It has a cult following, of which I am a member.
Rating:
Summary: Canonize Him.
Review: Toole is the finest, perhaps the only, Catholic writer to survive in 20th-c. America. (O'Connor, who shares some of his southern/Irish anti-intellectual self-hatred, is a Calvinist in all but name.) But of course he did not survive for long.Try to imagine the misery of being a fat, shamed genius sweating it out in the deep South just as the hegemonic smiles of the Kennedy era were beginning their march of conquest. There was no place for Toole under that smile. But he survived long enough to write this hilarious, merciless and heartbreaking novel. All the damned are here and speaking through Ignatius: the fat, the gauche, the gay, the South, the Irish, the working poor, the black...and most fatally of all, the prescient. Because Toole somehow saw all that was to come.Sitting in his room in that fetid backwater, he saw the farce and triumph of the sixties all complete. And he wrote it down with mercy toward none (least of all himself)...and some Peace-Corps fool of an editor stamped NO on it. And Toole died--not so much for our sins, as for the safety of our right to be stupid and smug. And America went on to make hacks, talentless strivers like Mailer and Bellow into heroes, while Toole fed the worms. That's sainthood, isn't it? It seems like sainthood to me. To convert all that horror and shame into something so wonderful, try to give it away, and die.
Rating:
Summary: Hilarious!
Review: This is one of the funniest books I have ever read. Anyone who has endured a series of mind-numbingly boring jobs he was vastly over-qualified for will be able to relate to the character of Ignatius Reilly. As a matter of fact, all the characters in the book are enjoyably real and humorous. It is difficult to understand how an author with such a great sense of humor could take his own life.
Rating:
Summary: Fortuna! You degenerate wanton!
Review: ...This book means a great deal to me, and every time I read it, I find something new. Hilarious and raunchy, this is one novel you wouldn't expect to find respectable Southern matrons clasping to their bosoms (of course, respectable Southern matrons can be very surprising). Ignatius pretty much speaks for anybody chained to their birthplace and longing for exotic adventure or bygone days in faraway places (North Africa or elsewhere). The best thing is how Toole manages to bring the world outside into the usually provincial world of Southern literature. For example, when I was eleven I knew what a "Mau-Mau" was, the identity of Norman Mailer, and the author of "The Consolation of Philosophy." This book is not only a howler, it's an EDUCATION, and without question the best book ever written about New Orleans (especially if your family, rather than being of pureblood Cajun or Creole stock, is one of those great Irish-German families that are responsible for New Orleans' "reminiscent-of-Hoboken" accent).
Rating:
Summary: Humor in tragedy
Review: This was quite possibly the funniest book I have ever read. It was shaped around the star role of Ignatius, but carried a slew of characters who had me bursting with laughter. It is a shame Toole did not stick around a bit longer to grace the literary world with the skill we are so desperately in need of.
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