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A Confederacy Of Dunces: 20th

Average rating: 4/5

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A Confederacy Of Dunces: 20th

by John Kennedy Toole
Foreword by: Walker Percy

Grove/Atlantic | June 14, 2000 | Trade Paperback

This wildly inventive comic masterpiece exploded on the literary scene like a time bomb in 1980. The rest is publishing history. Critics and readers adored "A Confederacy of Dunces, " and the book went on to win the Pulitzer Prize. Now this wonderfully outrageous, hilariously funny novel is back in a new hardcover edition.

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    Rating: 5/5

    Hilarious!

    -Veronica-

    3 years ago

    This is a story about Ignatius J. Reilly and his (mis)adventures through New Orleans during the 1960s. He is self-absorbed, pompous, odd, condescending, egocentric, lazy, farts shamelessly in public, deluded, a behemoth with "paws", and who, at 30, still lives with his mother. He is repulsive in every way but is also very articulate and well-educated. The reader follows Ignatius as he stumbles from one ridiculous situation after another -- organizing a workers riot, selling hotdogs, etc. He could very well be the biggest literary buffoon ever conceived and yet, you cannot help but love him. Even the supporting characters are also enjoyable, especially the floor-mopping Jones (Whoa!).

    There is a lot to be said about this novel as it is without a doubt a work of comedic genius, but I'll just say this -- PICK UP A COPY AND READ IT. It's hilarious!

    PS: John Kennedy Toole commited suicide partially perhaps as a result of failing to get this book published. After his death, his mother provided a copy of the manuscript to the great southern classic writer, Walker Percy (The Moviegoer, The Message in a Bottle). The book was published, became a cult classic, and 11 years later, won a Pulitzer. Great story.

    • Was this review
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    One of the funnier novels you could ever read.

    John Kennedy Toole never saw the publication of this rollicking adventure that went on to capture the Pulitzer Prize in 1981, having committed suicide twelve years before.

    How it got into print was only due the the relentless efforts of his mother, who took the manuscript to dozens and dozens of publishers over a number of years, before showing it to another writer, Mr. Walker Percy, who finally gave it the attention it deserved.

    While you laugh out loud at the many misadventures of the pompous and loquacious 300-pound Ignatius J. Reilly as he rumbles around the city of New Orleans, it's hard to imagine how so much hilarity could have been produced by a mind that was clearly in a such a dark place.
    Here's how it begins:

    "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."

    Ironically, my first exposure to this book also came during a dark time, as I read the entire novel over two days while in the hospital recovering from exploratory surgery to determine if I had throat cancer (didn't!).

    The recovery/waiting area was a large room containing approximately thirty beds and we were divided from each other only by curtains. How bizarre my chortles of laughter must have sounded as they mixed with the moans and groans of the other patients!

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    I read this book upon reading on a magazine that it is the one book that Augusten Burroughs always recommends to people. I have to admit that with all the hype on the back of the book, I was a bit leary. The first few pages of the book did not grab me as much as I thought it would. However, as I continued reading, the character of Ignatius Reilly just unfolded for me like a great Christmas present. I think the people who hated the book/Ignatius missed the point of the whole novel. Ignatius' absurdity is what made him lovable to me. And how can anyone not love the "planned riot in the Levy Pants"?!?!?!
    As much as this book is hilarious, I also found it to be tragic, especially in the last few chapters.
    Anyway, I think this book deserved the Pulitzer, and I'm greatly saddened that Kennedy Toole is not around to write more books like this.

    • Was this review
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    The story told is original, evocative and imaginative. Mr Toole gives us Ignatius Reilly, who superbly engrosses the reader with his views of philosophy, and the "complete corruption of the 20th century". At the ripe age of 30, I. R. realizes he must enter the workforce. A funny, brilliant work, and the ending is ingenious and as it should be. Enjoy!

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From Our Editors

We live in a society that is obsessed with beautiful people and beautiful bodies. But Ignatius J. Reilly is a huge beast of a man and a refreshing change. In A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole presents his comic masterpiece with original characters and plots that readers will love. This 20th anniversary edition is an essential addition to all John Kennedy Tool fans.

From the Publisher

This wildly inventive comic masterpiece exploded on the literary scene like a time bomb in 1980. The rest is publishing history. Critics and readers adored "A Confederacy of Dunces, " and the book went on to win the Pulitzer Prize. Now this wonderfully outrageous, hilariously funny novel is back in a new hardcover edition.

About the Author

John Kennedy Toole was born in New Orleans in 1937 and graduated from Tulane University. He earned a master's degree from Columbia University. While in high school, he wrote a humor column and a novel, The Neon Bible. He later taught at Hunter College in Manhattan, the University of Southwestern Louisiana, and St. Mary's Dominican College. His novel, Confederacy of Dunces, winner of the 1981 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, was published years after he killed himself following its initial rejection by publishers.

Walker Percy, born in Alabama, raised in Mississippi, and a former resident of Louisiana, was a member of a prominent Southern family who lost his parents at an early age and grew up as the foster son of his father's cousin. Percy graduated from the University of North Carolina and received his M.D. from Columbia, but was a nonpracticing physician who devoted much of his life to his writing. Percy's witty and provocative first novel, The Moviegoer (1961), won the 1962 National Book Award, but Charles Poore considers The Last Gentleman (1966) "an even better book." Love in the Ruins (1971) marks a sharp change in method and subject from the first two novels. A doomsday story set "at the end of the Auto Age," it exposes many foibles and abuses in contemporary life through sharp satire and extravagant fantasy. Whereas Love in the Ruins is funny, Percy's next novel, Lancelot (1977) is the rather bleak and pessimistic story of a deranged man who blows up his home when he finds proof of his wife's infidelities and then tells his story in an asylum for the mentally disturbed. Its apocalyptic vision is expressed in a more positive and affirmative way in The Second Coming (1980), which takes its title from the fact that it resurrects the character of Will Barret from The Last Gentleman and locates him, a quarter-century older, finding love and meaning in a cave.

Trade Paperback

416 Pages, 5.75 x 8.5 x 1.1 in

June 14, 2000

Grove/Atlantic

English


0802130208
9780802130204

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