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Loading... A Confederacy of Duncesby John Kennedy Toole
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. This was an interesting read for me. It deals with the life of a very well educated curmudgeon with delusions of grandeur. Reading this was a strange experience since he, Ignatius Reilly, was simultaneously pathetic and hilarious. I laughed out loud several times throughout but my relatively low rating is due to the fact that I generally need to like protagonists (or at least one of the characters) in a book in order to like it. If you don't have that hang-up, you will probably enjoy more than I did. There are certainly a lot of funny and strange characters populating these pages. The fact that the author committed suicide also had me thinking of Clifford and Professor Levy in the movie _Crimes and Misdemeanors_. I guess the sadness of it made me want to find something deeper in the book and I didn't. But, if I haven't totally dissuaded you by know, it was a funny read. (  )daisilla | Jul 6, 2009 |  1   Blech. I could *see* where others might find this funny, but I felt it went on and on and on, and that every single character was a broad stereotype. It felt too mean-spirited for my tastes. But at least I've finally finished it, eh? Later: Ok, it took an evening discussing the book, and darn it, but we were giggling over passages! The problems I had with stereotypes and mean-spirits were pointed out as satire and we talked about soooo much - sanity, mothers and sons, New Orleans, sexual ambiguity, nature vs nurture... It was a GREAT discussion, and I'd recommend this to any group that craves a deep discussion and is willing to tackle a somewhat difficult yet rewarding book... (  )kayceel | Jun 30, 2009 | jmnlman | Jun 16, 2009 | I liked it, but I didn't love it like I was supposed to. Maybe I don't dig on the anti-hero enough, but I found it to be sad--especially in light of Toole's and this book's story--more than funny. Dark humor or no, I'm glad I read it, but probably won't return to it. ( )prehensel | Jun 5, 2009 | Ignatious is the most repugnant character ever created. I didn't beleive people like him could exist . . . then I moved to NOLA. (  )CK8 | May 29, 2009 | 0.059 seconds to build listing  no reviews | add a review
Amazon.com (ISBN 0807126063, Hardcover)"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 (retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:22 -0400) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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