Rating: 
Summary: Hysterically Funny
Review: Without a doubt, this might be one of the funniest books I've ever read. The adsurdity of the story challenges our sense of sanity. I will never look at hot dog vendor the same way again. Toole's fine wit needles the fabric of this satrical story so tightly, he leaves us gasping for air.
Rating: 
Summary: Literary Suicide
Review: According to the Forward, by Walker Percy, this young author suicided in 1969. By doing so he missed seeing so many of his perceptions of humanity and social conditions in the US carried to their ultimate logical extreme. Toole was obviously an observant young writer, able to voice opinion well without communicating the underlying bitterness one would expect of a person on the brink of self-homicide.Perhaps Toole intended the characters to be caricatures. If so, he failed. The characters are merely the (not particularly) extremes found in the population pool of the 20th Century US, created and presented to the reader within a plot probably believed to be humorous. Readers might find the humor an uncomfortably realistic portrayal of human flaws. The book is certainly well written. It's an interesting read with excellent characterization, plot, and setting. It's also a book I didn't enjoy reading. Toole's astute awareness of human motivation, stupidity and the direction society was headed was, for me, overshadowed by the fact of his suicide. Toole guessed right about the direction and perceived correctly about many facets of the human condition, then deliberately curtailed his own experience of that life. Reading the book without that knowledge might have made it an enjoyable read. Six decades of life have (for me) confirmed much of what Toole observed about humanity. I suppose what this book lacks is the accompanying joy of having lived what he observed and found a reason for gratitude within that experience. Toole, in my view, might have made a great writer. Maybe he concluded, as Faye Dunaway expressed in a movie Toole saw, "The screwing I'm getting isn't worth the screwing I'm getting." If so, I believe he was wrong. I'd suggest potential readers skip this one and, instead, turn up their zoom lenses on their lives to full magnification. There's no harm in knowing the truths Toole discovered and couldn't live with. But the need for learning them over extended time and within the context of self-recognition, forgiveness and gratitude is punctuated by the fate of this author.
Rating: 
Summary: Dickens he ain't
Review: I wish I knew how a posthumous book should be edited. As a first novel (excluding the one Toole wrote as a child) it shows enormous creativity and imagination, but I schlepped through the second 200 pages hoping for a change of pace. He showed acute powers of observation -- I have known the group of not-so-smart bowling friends in Brooklyn, and I have worked at the long defunct Gloria Gloves in lower Manhattan, with the factory shut off from the office headed by the loyal office manager, the misfit clerk, and the owner impatient to get back to her hobby of show dogs, while the business decays from obsolescence and neglect. Burma Jones, the African-American sweeper working under threat of blackmail, is perhaps only drawn as broadly as the white characters, and he voices truths of life in the 60's, but he borders on a stereotype. Minkoff, the radical bohemian, exists even today on college campuses and in Soho. Ignatius's character can probably be found in the DSM-IV under dependent borderline personality with delusions of grandeur. He is funny until he's not so funny. The factor that keeps Ignatius from being Dickensian is that in Dickens's works the eccentric people who were funny had some basic worth, while the evil people were obviously evil. But Ignatius is too destructive -- he is parasitic on his mother, he writes a slanderous letter over a forged signature, he wants to lead the factory workers to do physical harm to the office manager, he ruins a desperate stripper's opening night, and he always bites the hands that feed him. Yet, I think Toole wants us to like him. Shakespeare shows us that Falstaff is destructive by having the prince reject him in the end. Ignatius's mother rejects him in the end, when he will stand in the way of her last chance for happiness, but the bohemian girlfriend accepts him, even as he is making her his chauffeur. I would want Toole to save some of the many incidents for a next book. I would also want him to have Ignatius show some growth, but he remains clueless all the way through, although the other characters grow. I would say this is a good book to taste, but it's not a good meal.
Rating: 
Summary: aargh! 3 years of solitary disappoinment!
Review: i bought this book several years ago on the recommendation of someone i thought would know better. so i started it and stopped about 50 pages into this "opus". just didn't connect. my boyfriend will not allow a book to leave our library so i stuffed it back in. 3 years later i picked it up and it started its limited appeal. i committed myself to finishing it even tho' it was frustrating. i agree with several reviewers that there is definitely HYPE about this book and OCCASIONALLY sparks some interest and imagination. that being said, the protagonist, I. Reilly, is too fantastic to believe. the one character i really belived and found terrific was "Jones". here is a ripe character. everthing else is overwrought and silly. IF YOU WANT great character development and wild imagination pick up Eugenides' MIDDLESEX or MARQUEZ' One Hundred Years of Solitude ---HERE LIES BRILLIANCE.
Rating:
Summary: A comedic masterpiece
Review: What can one say about this book that would do it justice? It is simply one of the funniest, most well written pieces of comedic literature to date. Words cannot really describe it, you simply MUST purchase and read this book today. It is rare that a book can make you laugh out loud, but this book will do it over and over again. The main character of the book is a slacker who is everything but that to himself. He brings to life the phrase "a legend in his own mind". Thirty-something years old, living at home with his mother, unable to hold a job longer than a week, he continues to make excuses and get himself into more messes than one could imagine. The only tragedy about the book is the author's own. Not knowing that his work would go on to become critically acclaimed Pulitzer Prize winning material, he committed suicide before he had a chance to experience his own success. I could not help but laugh as I read the book, but be saddened upon finishing that the world will not be able to experience more works from a true writing genius.
Rating:
Summary: Monumental sarcasm
Review: 'A Confederacy of Dunces' was a tremendous surprise to me as a reader. The story hit me like a blast of flatulence and sarcasm. It is a totally unpredictable read. The sheer freshness and originality will first stun you, then leave you gasping for more. The main character Ignatius, a big mind in an even bigger body, walks the streets of New Orleans pronouncing judgement upon everyone and everything that crosses his path. The belligerent behemoth leaves behind a wake of social destruction and confusion that would put Godzilla to shame. Meanwhile he entertains and educates his hapless reader by sharing the fruits of his medieval mind, his contemplations and jottings, giving an ultimate understanding of everything that was wrong with the 20th century. A marvellously funny read.
Rating:
Summary: The most amazing piece of writing!!!
Review: It is hard to say what is amazing in this book. Maybe it's the simple thing that is the world around us... There is so much humour in this book and yet underneath it a tregedy that cries so many tears... The hero, or better yet the worst hero type i have ever read in my life, making him the best antihero ever, is the strangest experience you will ever have the pleasure to read! Once you start this book u won't be able to put it down, but still this book is not for everyone interested in just a book. The writing in this book is amazing and as such should be appriciated. those who do not care for these things should do better by picking a diffrent book, even though i believe that this book is really by far the greatest writing piece i have ever read!!!
Rating:
Summary: Read John Irving instead
Review: I love characters that fly in the face of conventionality. I love irreverant characters who challenge the way we see the world. Ignatius is neither of these. His rantings on the ills of society from the safety of his bedroom in his mother's house were empty and silly. He is a completely unbelievable character, or at least one with whom I could not empathize. His twisted view of the world is so anathema to the realm of common experience that I'm surprise anyone can put themselves in it. Try as hard as I did, I couldn't raise enough interest in the characters to even finish this book. Read John Irving instead -- He's much funnier, can turn reality in interesting twists and still be believable, and has more important things to say about what it is to be a human being in the world.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting, very interesting
Review: There's not much really to say about this book other than read it. The main character is great. By the end of the book you are cheering for him. But it is not for the unimaginative. To really appreciate this book, you must be able to get inside of it and dissect it.
Rating:
Summary: it cannot get better
Review: Where do I start - where do I end ...... it's mesmerizing, it's the best book I have read after "100 years of solitude". The book was lying in my self for six months and I was little intimidated by the number of pages but once I started reading it, there was no stopping. I have asked myself the question.......have I read anything funnier - the answer is probably not. I promise "A Confederacy of Dunces" will change your perspective to the world as you view it - at least it did to me.....so much so that I traveled to New Orleans for 4 days to walk in routes of Ignatius , the hot dog vendor, author and self prophesized leader of the proletariat and downtrodden- the central character of this book. In spite of all his failures Ignatius Reilly has a level of confidence which will amaze everybody. I just hope some our world leaders had this level of independence.
This book was written almost 4 decades ago still it is so very socially relevant and New Orleans remains to be as it was 40 years ago. Everybody says that it is a real tragedy that John Kennedy Toole only wrote 2 books - one as a kid "Neon Bible" and "A Confederacy of Dunces" before he committed suicide but it really does not matter how much he created - just check out what he created. Sometimes it takes that only one book for an author to create his identity and mark as for example "Phillipe Alfau" wrote "Locos" which was published 60 years after it was written and now it is a classic.
"A Confederacy of Dunces" evolves around Ignatius Reilly but around him are the characters like Patrolman Mancuso (alias Angelo), Mr. Gonzales, Miss Trixie, Jones (the representative of powerless minority), Myrna (the strangest girlfriend that one can possibly have), Mrs. Levy and Dorian (the fairy who attracts every other bee). They may be dunces but there is something common with all of them - they are all bursting with confidence an has eternal hope in the playfulness of fate or "fortuna" (as Ignatius puts it.) The whole book covers a period of 2 months or less and you will never realize how time passes by while you are reading. The best part is even all these dunces never make it tragic rather at some point being a "bum" seems to be the way to go.
This is a work of love and effort and you will enjoy every line and pass out laughing. I just hope there were more books like this ......... I am off to New Orleans to meet Dorian.
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