A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
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Book Reviews of A Confederacy of Dunces
Book Review: it cannot get better
Summary: 5 Stars
Where do I start - where do I end ...... it's mesmerizing, it's the best book I have read after "100 years of solitude". The book was lying in my self for six months and I was little intimidated by the number of pages but once I started reading it, there was no stopping. I have asked myself the question.......have I read anything funnier - the answer is probably not. I promise "A Confederacy of Dunces" will change your perspective to the world as you view it - at least it did to me.....so much so that I traveled to New Orleans for 4 days to walk in routes of Ignatius , the hot dog vendor, author and self prophesized leader of the proletariat and downtrodden- the central character of this book. In spite of all his failures Ignatius Reilly has a level of confidence which will amaze everybody. I just hope some our world leaders had this level of independence. This book was written almost 4 decades ago still it is so very socially relevant and New Orleans remains to be as it was 40 years ago.
Everybody says that it is a real tragedy that John Kennedy Toole only wrote 2 books - one as a kid "Neon Bible" and "A Confederacy of Dunces" before he committed suicide but it really does not matter how much he created - just check out what he created. Sometimes it takes that only one book for an author to create his identity and mark as for example "Phillipe Alfau" wrote "Locos" which was published 60 years after it was written and now it is a classic.
"A Confederacy of Dunces" evolves around Ignatius Reilly but around him are the characters like Patrolman Mancuso (alias Angelo), Mr. Gonzales, Miss Trixie, Jones (the representative of powerless minority), Myrna (the strangest girlfriend that one can possibly have), Mrs. Levy and Dorian (the fairy who attracts every other bee). They may be dunces but there is something common with all of them - they are all bursting with confidence an has eternal hope in the playfulness of fate or "fortuna" (as Ignatius puts it.) The whole book covers a period of 2 months or less and you will never realize how time passes by while you are reading. The best part is even all these dunces never make it tragic rather at some point being a "bum" seems to be the way to go.
This is a work of love and effort and you will enjoy every line and pass out laughing. I just hope there were more books like this ......... I am off to New Orleans to meet Dorian.
Book Review: Most hilarious book (I know of) in the history of mankind
Summary: 5 Stars
Ok, my title may seem to have a touch of hyperbole but I stand by it...My buddy picked this up as a birthday present from a school library where he worked as a janitor. I feel kinda bad about that but it's one of my favorite possessions. I read this about once a year.
Ignatius J. Reilly exists in a lot of people but no one has ever painted in black and white print such an intrusive, brilliant, (...) belly-pain-laugh inducing, exact portrait of such a person in any book, movie, anything I've ever seen.
He's Homer Simpson disguised as an enlightened sophisticate, with a Master's Degree, apparently in disapproval.
Some seem to be turned off by such a hypochondriac slob profit-eating hot dog vendor and that's understandable but how anyone can not roll over with laughter at just the prose and style itself:
Ignatius telling his poor, poor mother for the like 27th time of his horrifying (but completely uneventful and quite successful for the Greyhound company) bus ride from New Orleans to Baton Rouge:
"Speeding along in that bus was like hurtling into the abyss." and "I vomited several times. The driver had to stop the bus somewhere in the swamps to let me get off and walk around for a while. (His poor, poor mother) The other passengers were rather angry. They must have stomachs of iron to ride in that awful machine."
The man is remarkable in his obliviousness to his negative impact on his surroundings yet unwaveringly certain of his profound insight into all societal ills. Kinda like Bill O'Reilly!
And the descriptions of Jones, an oft-harassed black guy in the 1960's south, who drills down his observations of the goofballs around him with keen and rational wit coming out of a cloud of cigarette smoke just slay me.
I swear to God, if you are a fan of stylistic but original writing and that effortless arrangement only a few people can do with the English language - Tom Wolfe, Joseph Heller, and even Dave Eggers (and Eggers is gonna blow my review for some people - as if anybody is out there is poking around at 1981 fiction novel critiques...) check this book out. In some circles it is considered one of the greatest American novels ever.
It's a rip-roaring hoot. Free at your public library (unfortunately not at City High in Iowa City though). The first 10 pages will tell you if you want to keep going or not.
Book Review: Excellent Snapshot of Americana at its Grittiest!
Summary: 5 Stars
I started reading this book and could not put it down. The story is captivating and the characters are compelling, original and, of course, hilarious! An absolute scream. I practically wet myself with delirious laughter!
I am going to buy a copy of this book for all of my friends this coming holiday. Laughter is the best medicine and CoD delivers them by the truckload.
I particularly loved Toole's depictions of: morbidly obese sneaky misanthropic dishonest middle-aged misfits unable to function in society; women as uneducated gold-diggers, bullied into submissive, subservient roles by their sons or employers; African Americans as foul-mouthed, lazy, viscious and scheming malcontents; Hispanics as spineless and clueless; old people as surly and senile; and of course, homosexuals as prancing foppish leather queens.
Man alive! I just can't decide what's best about this book: the parade of cultural stereotypes or the chronicle of a hero who has turned his life into a train wreck. They're both great! This is good old-fashioned American humor at its best. I think we can all agree on that -- Maury and Jerry aren't living on thousand acre estates for nothing. Am I right? Huh!? C'mon - don't leave me hanging!
It's a shame we'll see no more quality writing from this author. The Pulitzer was hardly enough! A Nobel Prize would scarcely do justice to this wonderful and timeless contribution to English literature. Confederacy of Dunces should be mandatory reading for all students, everywhere. At each and every grade level. There should be degree programs offered at the Masters and PhD level focusing solely on developing a greater comprehension of this tome, this Rosetta Stone of human behavior.
A gospel, really. The foundation of a new religion, that we could devote our lives to. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and L. Ron were hacks! We could all memorize quotes and passages from CoD that would be relevant to particular aspects of our lives that would guide us in our daily living and bolster us when times got tough. We could petition our state legislatures to change their license plate slogans to "What Would Ignatius Do?" or simply "WWID?"
Buy this book! You won't be disappointed! I'd give it 10 stars if I could. And if you wouldn't, yourself, it's probably because you're humorless.
Book Review: One of the great novels of the 20th Century
Summary: 5 Stars
This is an amazing book, alternatively hilarious and heart breaking.
Ignatius is often cited as a reason not to like the novel, and I confess he's a repulsive human. But I don't think it's the lack of hygiene, compulsive masturbation, flatulence or obesity that turn people off of Ignatius. He stands as a question to every social convention and class distinction, every rule and law, across the board. He objects to the idea of blacks becoming middle class, not because he wants to keep them down, but because he is horrified of the middle class. Likewise, his anti-feminist attitudes that are a function of his peculiar notions of sexual morality. For that matter, his sabotage and indolence on the job is a function of the fact that he does not want a job, but is forced into employment. Ignatius irritates people because he requires you to think about some of your simplest assumptions about life and morality.
The comparison to Don Quixote is not a bad one, but it is far from complete. He has elements of ?vejk as well, and is ultimately an original. The dialect writing is on a par with any Southern writer, including Faulkner. The humor is grand, and while I keep hearing that it's being developed for the screen, my stock reaction is that I'm stunned that no one has made it into one already. Virtually every scene in it is almost designed for the screen.
Toole's characters are so complete and compelling, and the situations he engineers for them are so clever and amusing, it's easy to take the book less seriously than it deserves. For a book written in the South in the 60's, it deals with a remarkable number of social issues that really didn't break through until after Toole was dead. Gay rights, the sexual revolution, feminism, social responsibility, the anti-war movement, the social safety net, geriatrics/elder-care, it's all in there. Some of it had started to break the surface by the time Toole killed himself, but he was way ahead of the curve on so many things.
For that matter, Ignatius ultimately raises the question of whether society has an obligation or even the right to 'help' mental misfits who don't want help. Ignatius has to be outrageous specifically because his legal and benign idiosyncrasies are interpreted from the start as being criminal and menacing.
Book Review: defective valves in louisiana
Summary: 5 Stars
I suppose it is no coincidence that as I decide to read John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces that the horrendous Louisiana oil gush would erupt in the Gulf of Mexico. Both are perfect indictments of the incompetence performed by those around us who would have us believe that they should be in charge and know what they are doing. Like the wreckage of the oil gush, this work by John Kennedy Toole is an ingenious novel that illustrates the incompetence and corruption that will ceaselessly flow when initiated from a broken valve.
Toole's work is a masterpiece of language and satire, centering, or perhaps orbiting around Ignatius J. Reilly, one of the more interestingly conceived characters I've ever read. A semi-educated giant of a slob in every sense imaginable and with no redeeming qualities, Ignatius waddles throughout the work, influencing typically for the worse anyone and everyone coming within his obese sphere of decay with his unfocused intellect. Unable to relate to anyone in New Orleans or society in general, Ignatius latently creates an intricate path of destruction in his avoidance of any type of employment while plotting social revolution on various fronts. That is, only after finding change for the movie theater. Ignatius is a contradiction of sloth and intellect, using his education to further his avoidance of reality. Whether forced to file the most menial of papers or selling hot dogs on the street, Ignatius would rather stage a worker revolt to have an afternoon off at the movies. Eerily similar in character to W.C. Fields, he is a bumbling spark that ignites the lesser incompetence and avarice all around him.
A Confederacy of Dunces is a work of slapstick in dialogue, where the patois of the New Orleans cops, office workers, exotic dancers, hot dog vendors and "vagrants" found throughout the city clashes with that of the "learned". Where whispers of lurking perverts or "comuniss" can get one arrested, the novel is a commentary on irrelevant intellectualism versus the reality of class struggle in the American South. As hilarious as the work is, it is a brilliant yet skewering glimpse at the plight of the so-called educated in everyday life, where people manipulate others into obeisance, even if they themselves don't know to what end.