The best-selling, Pulitzer Prize-winning classic hailed by The New York Times Book Review as "a masterwork . . . the novel astonishes with its inventiveness . . . it is nothing less than a grand comic fugue." A Confederacy of Dunces is an American comic masterpiece. John Kennedy Toole's hero, one Ignatius J. Reilly, is "huge, obese, fractious, fastidious, a latter-day Gargantua, a Don Quixote of the French Quarter. His story bursts with wholly original characters, denizens of New Orleans' lower depths, incredibly true-to-life dialogue, and the zaniest series of high and low comic adventures" (Henry Kisor, Chicago Sun-Times).
Amazon.com Review: "A green hunting cap squeezed the top of the fleshy balloon of a head. The green earflaps, full of large ears and uncut hair and the fine bristles that grew in the ears themselves, stuck out on either side like turn signals indicating two directions at once. Full, pursed lips protruded beneath the bushy black moustache and, at their corners, sank into little folds filled with disapproval and potato chip crumbs."
Meet Ignatius J. Reilly, the hero of John Kennedy Toole's tragicomic tale, A Confederacy of Dunces. This 30-year-old medievalist lives at home with his mother in New Orleans, pens his magnum opus on Big Chief writing pads he keeps hidden under his bed, and relays to anyone who will listen the traumatic experience he once had on a Greyhound Scenicruiser bound for Baton Rouge. ("Speeding along in that bus was like hurtling into the abyss.") But Ignatius's quiet life of tyrannizing his mother and writing his endless comparative history screeches to a halt when he is almost arrested by the overeager Patrolman Mancuso--who mistakes him for a vagrant--and then involved in a car accident with his tipsy mother behind the wheel. One thing leads to another, and before he knows it, Ignatius is out pounding the pavement in search of a job.
Over the next several hundred pages, our hero stumbles from one adventure to the next. His stint as a hotdog vendor is less than successful, and he soon turns his employers at the Levy Pants Company on their heads. Ignatius's path through the working world is populated by marvelous secondary characters: the stripper Darlene and her talented cockatoo; the septuagenarian secretary Miss Trixie, whose desperate attempts to retire are constantly, comically thwarted; gay blade Dorian Greene; sinister Miss Lee, proprietor of the Night of Joy nightclub; and Myrna Minkoff, the girl Ignatius loves to hate. The many subplots that weave through A Confederacy of Dunces are as complicated as anything you'll find in a Dickens novel, and just as beautifully tied together in the end. But it is Ignatius--selfish, domineering, and deluded, tragic and comic and larger than life--who carries the story. He is a modern-day Quixote beset by giants of the modern age. His fragility cracks the shell of comic bluster, revealing a deep streak of melancholy beneath the antic humor. John Kennedy Toole committed suicide in 1969 and never saw the publication of his novel. Ignatius Reilly is what he left behind, a fitting memorial to a talented and tormented life. --Alix Wilber
HILARIOUS! This is the funniest book I have ever read. I suspect that "The Simpsons"'s Comic Book Guy is based upon Ignatius.
Not What I Remember Having been smitten by this book in my twenties, I figured it was time to re-visit it in my forties. Big mistake. While still a ridiculous tragi-comedy, it must have been a slow year in 1981 for Pulitzer Prize contenders. Maybe I just know too many people with Ignatius Reilly tendencies now. Perhaps the book's editors couldn't bring themselves to tighten up the work of a dead author. Anyway I cut it, I found it tiresome on second reading (though I will admit to laughing out loud repeatedly).
Seriously? Someone compared this disaster to the Seinfeld tv series, and I suppose I would agree. I never had much appreciation for Seinfeld and its desperate grasps at comedy; just so, Confederacy of Dunces relies largely on slapstick, nerve grating characters, and meandering plot. The book drags on and on--the climax, that should indicate an easy, swift road to the conclusion, is so backward that the last 20 pages will be even harder to read through than some of the middle 20 pages.
In all fairness, there was some effective comedic elements; the voices of the characters were unique, and the language was elegant. Its hard to say exactly why this greatly lauded, Pulitzer Prize winning novel failed to live up to my expectations, what literary mechanics failed Toole, but I would approach the reading of this book with a grain of salt or two. Not something I would ever read twice.
Either you love it or... you can't even finish it. This book was suggested to me by a friend who absolutely raved about its comic genius. Well, I couldn't wait to read it! Afterall, we have fairly similar taste in books. After forcing myself to get through the first 100 pages, hoping it would get better, I just had to stop. This book was hands-down, the LEAST funny book I have ever read in my entire life. Eventually, trying to actually read it and not skim became completely impossible. The story jumps from location to location so much that I wondered what was even going on and why the author chose to throw in the "bar" location. The main character is horrendously annoying and not even in a funny way, in a grotesque, childish manner. And God help you during the breaks in which Ignatius writes page after page of intensely boring "stories". This book was much too over-the-top for me and I agree with another reviewer that unless you're into "farts and burps" and finger licking this book is not for you.
Overdone oddity Too strange to be good, with a feeling that the oddity is draped consciously over the whole thing in an attempt to be seen as odd. A first and last novel, as the author committed suicide!
I checked www.imdb.com to see if a movie version had been attempted of the story, and breathed a sigh of relief that it had not. Supposedly the book is a formative influence in Jimmy Buffet's songs, although I'm not sure I see how.
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