Rating: 
Summary: Excellent! Highly recommended!
Review: I read the swedish translation of "A Confederacy of Dunces" the first time in 1982 - and many times since. Read it and learn about a "new" filing system and why it is OK to arrive late to work.
Rating:
Summary: A truly funny -- and sad -- work of literature
Review: Hilarious, poignant, sad, descriptive, beautifully written -- a work only a dunce could not find funny or touching. O'Toole's words and gift for characterization lift this marvelous book into the strata of great American novels like Huckleberry Finn and Catch-22. Ignatius J. Reilly is an obese, arrogant shut-in who launches verbal assaults at everyone and everything that offends his "world view." He finds plenty to criticize, and the scenes of him spewing articulate venom at misguided hot-dog buyers and others are small masterpieces. Another scene, of Ignatius trying to incite pant factory workers to strike (the stained sheet with Ignatius's handwritten strike message is pure genius) is worth the price of admission alone. For those who think that following the saga of a sad, poor, overweight loner is too depressing to be funny, think again. Such is O'Toole's writing prowess and gift for dialect that scene after scene delivers gusto humor entwined with tragic undercurrents. And, unlike O'Toole's own life, Ignatius's seems to turn out okay. The book's ending shows us that O'Toole had great affection for his ornery, chronically dispeptic creation. A great book indeed.
Rating:
Summary: Pure entertainment.
Review: The hilarioius misadventures of a 400 pound, medieval minded, sulking, pouting mama's boy living in New Orleans. The fun begins when an auto mishap forces him to leave the house and get a job. Ignatius Reilly, for that is his name, spreads chaos wherever he goes. One of the greatest comic novels ever written.
Rating: 
Summary: Review of A Confederacy of Dunces, by John Kennedy Toole
Review: I am from New Orleans, a lifelong native and resident. I read this book when I was 19 years old (for the first time) and then just recently at my grand old age of thirty something. I remember the hype from the English Department at the University of New Orleans-the year was 1981 and I had to read the book for an English course. Constantly, over and over again, I heard what a great book this was, and I agreed-somewhat. My problem with the story back then was because it seemed like a masterpiece to me for the first few chapters, but then the plot bogged down in a mire of excessive sleaze. I have lived and worked in the French Quarter for several years, and I can say that the individuals who live on the fringe of society there are definately NOT like Toole's depiction of characters like Liz Steele or Betty Bumper, Dorian Green or Lana Lane. Toole is writing about an era that is today all but faded, an era of New Orleans rapidly descending into forgotten lore. The Irish Third Ward is today an inner city wasteland of decrepit houses and crumbling warehouses, and in the quarter, you are more likely to see characters from all over the country with a myriad of traits all differant from each other. The Quarter is a crowded, tight space today and the ghosts of the past are all leaving. But still, there are many still alive-the majority, I would think-who remember the old ways and crack a grin at this novel. But as a young man of 19 years, I thought it was mediocre at best because of the way Toole packed it with sleaze and what is now almost anachronisms, anachronisms that tend to remind me of my parents and grandparents, betraying the great promise the first few chapters displayed. Today, I am repulsed by the similarity between this book and William Faulkner's short story, " A Rose for Emily." The thematic similarity is clear; Toole's story takes place about the time Old New Orleans was starting to fade into the modern era of the Superdome, Poydras Street and the World's Fair. Faulkner's short story takes place near the end of the Old South. In both of these stories the images of decay are present. I am reminded that Toole is a southern writer, but his book is like a sad commentary on the often mentioned flight to the suburbs taken by many of the urban middle-class, a flight which began in the sixties, leaving mostly undesireables in the downtown area. I give this book a "6" because Toole uses very accurate dialogue and cultural referances, but the over-all impact of the novel is too weary; the sleaze fest becomes offensive.
Rating: 
Summary: Toole Should've Waited Around a Bit
Review: This book was one of those few to make me laugh out loud until I was crying - the sheer lunacy of this character is absolutely fascinating. Ignatius is the personification of the obnoxiousness that resides in all of us, and Toole's carefully crafted words paint a vivid picture of New Orleans, Levy Pants, and his mother's house. His letters to the Minx are somewhat tedious, but humouress nonetheless, his descriptions unique, apt, and crass. It broke my heart to think of this book's creator defeated by rejection, and missing the celebration of this wonderful book.
Rating:
Summary: A uniquely American tragicomic masterpiece!
Review: I know I'm just adding to the heap, but, as this is one of my favorite books of all time, I have to comment. Toole has mercilessly caricatured nearly everyone and everything in his book, giving thereader an exaggerated, but palpable picture of New Orleans'neighborhoods, with neighbors in residence.
Hilarious? You bet! But it is hilarity based on poignancy. Each new episode that the pompous but pitiable Ignatius embarks on brings its varieties of sad sacks. Yet you cannot help but laugh. And laugh. But you know, each time I re-read it, I have to go buy some hot dogs...
Rating:
Summary: What the Pulitzer is all about
Review: I received this book some 10 years ago as a gift and have since bought 8 copies and given them as gifts with the note..."If one ever wondered what it takes to be awarded the Pulitzer..." Ignatius' pompous arrogance and amoral naivite never cease to amuse and delight me and the fact that the characters come full circle bringing otherwise unrelated people into contact is magic. My most recent gift of the novel, just last week,had me attempting to read just the first two pages to a friend and I couldn't complete even one without breaking up. Highly recommended for those who like to laugh out loud and don't care who hears.
Rating:
Summary: Humor-driven, scathing sociological commentary
Review: My wife is used to it: I start working on my car, and I begin laughing. Valves! Toole has the gift of taking the mundane and elevating it to the hysterical. He manipulates humor in ways that are both obvious and subtle at once: the workers trying to carry Ignatius while they strike, for example, make us laugh as we picture this possibility; the character "Dorian Greene" makes as laugh as we complete the subtle reference. Dorain GREENE!!! While the book always puts me in stitches, I find it somehow awfully depressing. In the end, Toole seems to tell us that only those who are the most out of touch with their surroundings and their objective realities are our true geniuses. The rest of us become the dunces in confederacy. I gave this book a ten because in addition to providing us with well-developed characters, a side-splitting tale, and an interesting setting, Toole uses those instruments to communicate that dismal prediction. It kills me that we don't have Toole around to entertain us further and expound on his theories about society. But then, I don't know Toole's personal history, and perhaps he felt besieged by a similar confederacy.
Rating:
Summary: A Defining Work
Review: Scan the numeric ratings given to this American literary masterpiece by the previous reviewers. No fives or sevens ... this is simply the best book you'll ever read ... or you'll hate it. Ignatius J. Reilly stirs readers passion like few figures before or after his creators untimely demise. Read this book.
Rating:
Summary: reapprasial
Review: You know, usually I wouldn't write a review like this, usually I wouldn't comment on anyone else's statements on a book, but hell, let's be honest: everyone who wrote anything about this book is either a benighted moron, or a cruel, vicious little person who gets off reading about other people's misery. Most of the reviews are great, raving and ranting about the book's excellence. yes, it's a good book. But it is also a very sad book. Most reviews talk about 'laugh out loud funny' and other cliched buzz phrases and it just doesn't apply to this book. Sure, you may laugh at something here or there within, crack a smile, a grin, a hearty, wicked chortle. But the book is about a fat, sick, crazy lunitic who's too smart and too paranoid and convinced that everyone in the world is out to get him. Not the basis for hilarity, is it. Sure, it could be made hilarious, with rampant exaggeration and skillfully making the character tremendously unlikeable, thereby changing the novel into a vicious comedy ripping this loser apart. But Toole clearly felt affection towards his character. He wanted things to turn out all right for him, but, based on his grounding the story in reality, that just didn't seem the way things should go. It is not a comedy. It is a tragedy with few moments of humor to lift the character's (and perhaps the reader's, but what writer really cares while writting a book what a general audience will think?)spirits or to give him a chance at laughing at himself and thereby restore some sense of humanity. As for the people angry and disappointed that they didn't find the book funny--don't listen to what people say about anything, chances are you'll disagree. Haven't you learned that by now?
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