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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. I was putting this off because I glanced at a page here and there at it seemed so gloomy and horrid. But read it in its proper order and it is a laugh riot and a true American classic. Wonderful! (  ) hjjugovic | Dec 23, 2009 |  I really enjoyed the social commentary and satire of this book, and the right-on-target portrayal of New Orleans. After the first half though, I did tire of Ignatius' antics and really, his self-desctructive anger. He ceased to be funny and started to be sad and pathetic. I did not take this book to be as humourous as some; this brand of satire is too sadly true to be funny and I couldn't tell if Toole intended it as humor or not. I also did not find the end satisfying at all. Toole was clearly a skilled and insightful writer. His own story is so hearbreaking and I wish the world had a chance to sample more of his work. (  ) technodiabla | Dec 14, 2009 | The main character is Ignatius J Reilly – a unique comic creation – the ultimate anti hero. I can’t think of any book even vaguely similar. Laughed so much the tears were running down my cheeks. Ignatius is a hideous, repulsive social misfit, yet he is so confident of his genius and he has such wild dreams and delusions that he’s engaging. He reminds me of Don Quixote – living in a fantasy world, out of touch with reality. But Ignatius is not the only weirdo – all the other characters are extreme types – his mother, Burma Jones the Negro, Mancuso the policeman, Mr & Mrs Levy who own the clothing factory, the other staff at the factory. They’re all deliciously nuts, and the dialogues are stunning. ( ) RobinDawson | Dec 7, 2009 | Finally picked this one up after many, many recommendations. The person who recommended it to me last and loudest reckoned that Ignatius J Reilly *is* the Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons. (Fat, overly enamoured of his own literate opinions, a Masters degree in something arty, etc.) So he was a big simply-drawn yellow slob in my mind as I read it. :) And A Confederacy of Dunces took me an age and a half to finish! I kept on putting it down and picking up other books in between (never a good sign). I could *see* the humour in Confederacy but it wasn't tickling my funny bone much. It's not that it's not a good book (Ignatius J Reilly is an amazing comic creation), it's just that if a nuclear bomb were to be dropped on New Orleans in the book at about the halfway point, I might have just breathed a sigh of relief that all these irredeemable characters were blown to kingdom come. There's not a single character that I could identify with, let alone *like*. I tagged it "grotesque" at one stage, and I'm sticking with that as the one-word-summing-up. Can't say I enjoyed it - all the characters were most unlikeable, and there didn't seem to be any point in the plot (they're all still revolting at the end, and I like a bit of character development). It's been highly recommended by a number of people (most of whom are men, if that makes a difference), and is on the 1001 You Must Read Before You Die list, but I think it's a personal thing - they probably got the humour. It's not a dreadful book, it's just not for me. (  ) wookiebender | Nov 26, 2009 | After reading one lackluster book after another, I was getting worried. Maybe they aren’t bad. Maybe I just don’t like books anymore. Maybe my tastes just don’t match the real world. Maybe I just set the bar too high. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe… But then, after wandering the wilderness of mediocrity, I found my way back into the Promised Land. This is a great book. This is a wonderful book. This is an entertaining book. This is a funny book. This is a weird book. This is a book that tells a fantastical story in a warped real world with characters you meet every day (if you always take a wrong turn.) This is a book that defies being put down. This is a book that is an award-winner which deserves every award it gets. This book is…indescribable. I won’t even bother with the plot. (And, no, I’m not afraid of spoilers. I don’t think there’s any way to spoil this book.) First, you’ve probably already heard that this is about the impossible character Ignatius Reilly and his improbable life in New Orleans. Second, I just don’t think you can describe Ignatius’ life with his mother and the characters of the street in any way that even begins to help. Let’s just say Ignatius is a genius (just ask him) who spends his time navigating a world full of dunces (just ask him again). And those characters/dunces are as strange a conglomeration as you will ever see. There is nary a loveable character in there, yet you will still find yourself caring about what happens to each and every one of them. And, if this tale serves no other purpose, it makes a great palate cleanser for when you’ve had all the Ayn Rand you can stand. (Take that all you self-proclaimed geniuses.) (  )2  figre | Nov 17, 2009 | 
 A pungent work of slapstick, satire and intellectual incongruities - yet flawed in places by its very virtues. Ultimately, Ignatius is simply too grotesque and loony to be taken for a genius; the world he howls at seems less awful than he does. Pratfalls can pass beyond slapstick only if they echo, and most of the ones in this novel do not. They are terribly funny, though, and if a book's price is measured against the laughs it provokes, A Confederacy of Dunces is the bargain of the year.
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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)
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