Product Description
This Pulitzer Prize-winning novel has sold over three-quarters of a million copies and continues to earn critical acclaim. The story of one Ignatius J. Reilly, a "Don Quixote of the French Quarter," it is a masterpiece of human folly and tragedy.
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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
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 A unique reading experience
For anyone who is a fan of 20th century literature this is a must read. You can and will be able to put it down but you will not be able to keep yourself from picking it back up.
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 Comic, but does not keep me engaged to the end ( wuzjohn )
While this novel was comical and the writing flows, the story never goes anywhere from that point on. It just keeps going and going and things seem to stay the same until the very end. It is essentially a single thought played out with almost no variations until the very end. It was an enjoyable read until maybe one third of the book. The author probably should've ended it there. Three stars.
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 Could not sit through it.
I was too annoyed with the main character.
He is this fat annoying man who blames everyone and victimizes himself for every single situation.
I find myself to be able to read through books easily and relate well...
I see the satire in this.
But I was very annoying and I could not find myself continuing this book any further.
I don't recommend this book.
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Simply Amazing ( mskaliszewski )
Perhaps one of the best books that no one has heard of. Without spoiling the plot, I find it suffice to say that John Kennedy Toole has created one of the greatest literary characters of the 20th century. This book is hilarious, due in main part to the protagonist of the story. Ignacious is an intelligent, naive, gluttonous, and sloth-like young man finding it difficult to break his outer shell and join the rest of the world in reality. I don't know what else to say, but just need to read this book. You will smile, maybe laugh outloud, but most importantly you will have a great time while reading of his misadventures and strategic blunders.
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A Comi-tragedy to a T
This novel was written in 1969 and published posthumously by the author's mother in 1980 when it won a Pulitzer Prize. In it, Ignatius J. Reilly, the pathetic, slovenly 30-something, highly literate but socially inept momma's boy has run-ins with the law, loses job after job and fails with women, all the while expounding his down-his-nose view of the world. The ultimate loser. This book is SO funny I constantly laugh out loud (it's one of the few books I've EVER read more than once). But it's also sad. A true tragicomedy. And it still reads as fresh as if it were written in today's world. Sadly, this was Toole's only full-length novel. But what a masterpiece it is!
Not only is it funny as hell, but the dialogue is on the mark when it comes to New Orleans dialect. John Kennedy Toole had it down to a T. One of my favorite passages follows. It speaks of Santa Battaglia, aunt of Patrolman Mancuso, girlfriend of Ignatius J. Reilly's mother:
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Santa grabbed the picture on the mantelpiece, a photograph of an ancient and hostile-looking woman in a black dress and black stockings standing in a dark alley paved with oyster shells.
"Poor momma," Santa said feelingly, giving the picture a loud, wet kiss. The grease on the glass that covered the photograph showed the frequency of these affectionate onslaughts. "You sure had it hard, kid." The little black coals of Sicilian eyes glared almost animatedly at Santa from the snapshot. "The only picture of you I got, momma, and you standing in a alley. Ain't that a shame."
Santa sighed at the unfairness of it all and slammed the picture down on the mantelpiece among the bowl of wax fruit and the bouquet of paper zinnias and the statue of the Virgin Mary and the figurine of the Infant of Prague. Then she went back to the kitchen to get some ice cubes and one of the kitchen chairs. After she had returned with the chair and a little picnic cooler of ice cubes, she arranged her best jelly glasses on the mantelpiece before her mother's picture. The proximity of the picture made her grab it and kiss it again, the ice cube in her mouth cracking against the glass.
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See what I mean?
A Confederacy of Dunces is part slapstick, part tragedy, part philosophy, part soap opera, part crime novel, and part character sketch.
This particular edition [1996, Wings Books (hardcover)] contains a sensitive and elucidating foreword by famous Southern writer Walker Percy. In it, he praises JKT both for his ability to put his finger on the pulse of New Orleans as well as for his character portrayal. Mr. Percy also explains how the novel first fell into his hands and ultimately how it came to be published.
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