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A Confederacy of Dunces Paperback – January 1, 1987

by John Kennedy Toole (Author), Walker Percy (Foreword)

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Winner of the Pulitzer Prize

“A masterwork . . . the novel astonishes with its inventiveness . . . it is nothing less than a grand comic fugue.”—The New York Times Book Review

A Confederacy of Dunces is an American comic masterpiece. John Kennedy Toole's hero, one Ignatius J. Reilly, is "huge, obese, fractious, fastidious, a latter-day Gargantua, a Don Quixote of the French Quarter. His story bursts with wholly original characters, denizens of New Orleans' lower depths, incredibly true-to-life dialogue, and the zaniest series of high and low comic adventures" (Henry Kisor, Chicago Sun-Times).

Reading age

12 years and up
Print length

405 pages
Language

English
Lexile measure

800L
Dimensions

5.4 x 1.2 x 8.2 inches
Publisher

Grove Weidenfeld
Publication date

January 1, 1987
ISBN-10

0802130208
ISBN-13

978-0802130204
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Customer reviews

4.3 out of 5

5,588 global ratings

5 star		65%
4 star		15%
3 star		9%
2 star		5%
1 star		5%

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Buy it and read it.

Reviewed in the United States on February 9, 2023

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I was pleasantly surprised at how funny it is. I burst out laughing in the middle of the night reading it in bed.
I don't usually do that. The main character is a well drawn person that you may know. I actually found it inspiring to see the only book written by the author, printed long after the authors death get a Pulitzer. Well deserved. Thank his Mother. The satire is rich. The understanding of how a lazy, blowhard, intellectually gifted, ridiculous malcontent rings so true and makes me wonder about the author's life. I intend to read it again. Enjoy it again.

2 people found this helpful

As close to a perfect novel as you're likely to find

Reviewed in the United States on August 31, 2015

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<em> <a style="font-style: italic;" href=[...]</a> </em>by <a href="[...]</a> is funny, wise, and as close to a perfect novel as you’re likely to find.

Protagonist Ignatius C. Reilly is a bloated buffoon, a man-baby who lives with his mother, has a troubled digestive valve that causes him to burp and fart with great frequency, and possesses one of the most “unique” worldviews you’re likely to find.

Ignatius is loaf completely at ease with his loafishness:
<blockquote><em>“I dust a bit,” Ignatius told the policeman. “In addition, I am at the moment writing a lengthy indictment against our century. When my brain begins to reel from my literary labors, I make an occasional cheese dip.”</em></blockquote>
Ignatius is like a giant child when he considers his career options and argues with his mother:
<blockquote><em>I suspect that something like a newspaper route would be rather agreeable.</em></blockquote>
<blockquote><em> “I dare you to come out in that shredded nightgown and get me!” Ignatius answered defiantly and stuck out his massive pink tongue.</em></blockquote>
Above all, <em>A Confederacy of Dunces</em> is <em>funny</em>. Laugh out loud is an overused phrase, but <em>COD</em> will make you LOL for realz, yo. The situations are so absurd, the characters so odd, and the dialogue veers between biting satire punctuated by unexpected blasts of pee-your-pants profanity.
<blockquote><em>“Go dangle your withered parts over the toilet!” Ignatius screamed savagely. Miss Trixie shuffled away.</em></blockquote>
No mater what the problem, Ignatius always finds a way to blame others.
<blockquote><em>“Employers sense in me a denial of their values.” He rolled over onto his back. “They fear me. I suspect that they can see that I am forced to function in a century which I loathe.</em></blockquote>
<blockquote><em>You must realize the fear and hatred which my </em>weltanschauung<em> instills in people.</em></blockquote>
<blockquote><em>He twisted his face into a mask of suffering. There was no use fighting Fortuna until the cycle was over. “You realize, of course, that this is all your fault.</em><em> </em></blockquote>
<blockquote><em> “You’re full of bulls***.” </em>

<em>“I? The incident is sociologically valid. The blame rests upon our society.”</em></blockquote>
Sometimes <em>COD</em> goes for screwball comedy and slapstick. Taken as a whole, <em>COD</em> is the mother of all farces.

When he’s not avoiding work or fighting with his mother, Ignatius plots against Myrna, a radical student he once attended classes with. The romantic ending of <em>COD</em> is anticipated but still manages to be unexpectedly satisfying.
<blockquote><em>Dr. Talc idly wondered if they (</em>Iggy and Myrna)<em> had married each other. Each certainly deserved the other.</em></blockquote>
Through Myrna’s letters we see she has true insight into Ignatius’ personality:
<blockquote><em>This “automobile accident” is a new crutch to help you make excuses for your meaningless, impotent existence.</em></blockquote>
<blockquote><em>A good, explosive orgasm would cleanse your being and bring you out of the shadows.</em></blockquote>
<blockquote><em>Great Oedipus bonds are encircling your brain and destroying you</em></blockquote>
<blockquote><em>Ignatius, a very bad crack-up is on the way. You must do something. Even volunteer work at a hospital would snap you out of your apathy,</em>

<em>The valve closes because it thinks it is living in a dead organism. Open your heart, Ignatius, and you will open your valve. </em></blockquote>
<em> </em>

Behind his absurdity, Ignatius is sad and lonely, a sorrow that stems from his isolationism:
<blockquote><em>We both exist outside the inner realm of American society. Myrna was, you see, terribly engaged in her society; I, on the other hand, older and wiser, was terribly dis-engaged.</em></blockquote>
<blockquote><em>I really have had little to do with them, for I mingle with my peers or no one, and since I have no peers, I mingle with no one.</em></blockquote>
<blockquote><em>I don’t dance. I never dance. I have never danced in my life.</em></blockquote>
<em>COD</em> is also a love letter to Toole’s native New Orleans:
<blockquote><em>Patrolman Mancuso inhaled the moldy scent of the oaks and thought, in a romantic aside, that St. Charles Avenue must be the loveliest place in the world.</em></blockquote>
<blockquote><em>New Orleans is, on the other hand, a comfortable metropolis which has a certain apathy and stagnation which I find inoffensive. At least its climate is mild.</em>

<em>The balconies of the old buildings hung over my head like dark branches in an allegorical forest of evil.</em></blockquote>
I won’t get into the tragic personal history of author John Kenndy Toole. The story behind his career and the publication of <em>COD</em> is itself an impossible tale of heartbreaking genius. But the toxic mother-son relationship at the heart of this novel certainly is rife with autobiographical elements.

Ms. Reilly laments Ignatius’ weak work ethic.
<blockquote><em> “My heart’s broke.”</em>

<em>“Ain’t he writing something?” </em>

<em>“Some foolishness nobody never gonna feel like reading.”</em></blockquote>
Fortunately, the real-life Thelma Toole felt differently about her son’s work.

-30-

3 people found this helpful

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Reviewed in the United States on January 27, 2023

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More than a pleasure, an indulgence to read. Rich storytelling with authentic characters doing the best they can, just like most of us. A whirlwind of silly, obnoxious, pitiful, and warm moments. It gets better every read. Enjoy!!!

One person found this helpful

Astonishing use of words

Reviewed in the United States on January 26, 2023

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Beyond loved this book! Every paragraph is filled with sentences that are pure gems of humor, sarcasm, and mind numbing brilliance. Seriously. Take time to savor every single word and phrase he writes. What an incredible talent the author was.

3 people found this helpful

Reviewed in the United States on February 5, 2023

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This is one of those books that everyone tells you is great, but you never get around to it. Making the time.

One person found this helpful

The adventures of a verbose and lazy man-child forced to get off his duff and get a job

Reviewed in the United States on October 16, 2017

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If you’ve heard of this book, but not read it, you’re probably aware of the troubled circumstance of its publication. Several years after having failed to be published, Toole committed suicide. The story of the book would have ended there, except Toole’s mother found the typescript and carted it around to people in the literary community. After much persistence and not taking no for an answer, she managed to get Walker Percy to read the manuscript, and the rest is posthumous Pulitzer Prize winning history.

It would be easy to dismiss the editors involved in rejecting this manuscript as grade-A lunkheads, or as the lead character (Ignatius J. Reilly) likes to verbally skewer his victims “Mongoloids.” However, one can see how said lunkheads would find this much-beloved novel risky. It’s a character-driven novel in which the lead character is obnoxious and unlovable in the extreme. Reilly is a pretentious and pedantic professorial type--verbally speaking-- wrapped into the obese body of a man-child who is emotionally an ill-mannered five year old with a bombastic vocabulary. Reilly has no impulse control, takes no responsibility, and is prone to tantrums, sympathy-seeking dramatic displays, and wanton lies. He’s the worst because he thinks he’s better than everyone despite the fact that in all ways except his acerbic tongue, he’s worse than everyone.

That said, the book—like its unsympathetic lead character—is hilarious through and through. What it lacks in a taught story arc and a theme / moral argument (the latter being why the editor at Simon and Schuster rejected the book after showing initial interest in it) it more than makes up in hilarity.

I should point out that when I say that this isn’t a plot-driven book, it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have an interesting wrap-up at the end—which I will not discuss to avoid spoiling it. The plot revolves around events in the life of a lazy man-child forced to go to work. It’s not a journey of change, discovery, or adventure. While, in most cases, a character-driven story with an unmalleable lead would be a recipe for a book that flops, here it keeps one reading to the last page because it’s Ignatius’s failure to become a better man that ensures the book is funny to the end. Reilly is constantly making decisions that are both overly contemplated and yet ill-considered.

The book follows Ignatius Reilly through an event that results in a tremendous loss of money for Ignatius’s mother. This forces her to finally put her foot down and insist the man—who she still thinks of as her little boy—get a job. It should be noted that Ignatius’s mother’s eventual coming around to the monster her son has become is a major driving force in the story—though we can see a distinct lack of taking of responsibility that echoes that of Ignatius, himself. Ignatius gets a fine—if lowly, clerical--job at the slowly-dying Levy Pants Company, but gets fired after he encourages a worker protest that goes awry. He then gets a job as a hotdog cart vendor—a job considered the lowest of the low by both his mother and New Orleans’ society-at-large. The latter is the job he has at the end when a final chain of events unfolds (not without tension and drama, I might add.)

On the theme issue, the Simon & Schuster editor was correct that the book isn’t really about anything except how to muddle through life as a lazy, cranky, emotionally-stunted, and overly-verbose doofus. (But he was oh-so wrong about that being a lethal deficit—according to the Pulitzer Prize committee as well as innumerable readers.)

I’d recommend this for any reader with a sense of humor. You won’t like Ignatius J. Reilly, but you’ll find his antics hilarious, and you’ll want to know what happens to him in the end even if he is irredeemable.

200 people found this helpful

Written in a time of extreme racism and non acceptance of people who are “different”.

Reviewed in the United States on March 2, 2023

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The protagonist is a very difficult person to like. I read this book many years ago and re-reading it
Made me upset at the attitudes - it definitely is not a comedy.

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Tish

Would recommend

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 25, 2016

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Hilarious book, well written. Would recommend

One person found this helpful

amanda

One of the best books I've read in ages.

Reviewed in Canada on January 14, 2017

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Oh my God! This book was freakin' hilarious. The main character is a complete loser called Ignatius Reilly. The other characters are just as absurd, and sadly the victims of Ignatius's rare moments of activity. I don't blame Mrs. Reily for having a drinking problem.
I wanted to read other books by this author and was shattered for days knowing he ended his life at the age of 31, feeling like a failure because no publishers saw the genius of this story. It took years and countless rejections before his mother was able to find someone to publish it. It ended up winning the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction a year later.
I did order his only other novel, The Neon Bible. If it is even half as good as ACOD, I will be overjoyed

6 people found this helpful

José Gajón

Aléjense personas "rosas".

Reviewed in Mexico on June 18, 2021

Verified Purchase

La edición es muy, muy bonita. Colorida y por demás agradable al tacto.
Ni hablar de la novela de John Kennedy Toole que es exquisita, aunque definitivamente no es para todos, como pude ver en otras reseñas. Si no compartes nada con el nihilismo, ni remotamente, anda a leer Cortazar, la biblia, qué sé yo.

3 people found this helpful

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Giorgia Chiaro, Book-tique

Aspettative troppo alte

Reviewed in Italy on June 6, 2019

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Ho fatto un po’ fatica a leggere questo romanzo, non perché sia brutto, ma poiché il ritmo è un po’ lento e la trama ingrana solo dopo la metà del libro; fino a quel momento mi è sembrato tutto troppo senza senso. Tutto sommato, dopo lo scoglio iniziale superato, quando si entra nel vivo delle disavventure d’Ignatius il libro si inizia a godere di più. Ho apprezzato maggiormente la parte satirica che fa parte di tutto il romanzo più che la trama di per se, quando ho iniziato a capire che tutte queste battute senza senso erano volte a questo scopo; il libro tutto sommato mi è piaciuto, anche se, se devo essere onesta, dalle premesse mi aspettavo forse qualcosa di più!

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M. Yakiwchuk

Stands the test of time

Reviewed in Canada on July 25, 2012

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There are very few books that I have read that hold up as well as this one has. Almost 40 years after it was written, almost nothing in this book reads stale or dated. Everything is as fresh and relevant now as the day it was published. The language, character, and place, are all uniquely New Orlean'. But the story, is one for all time. Ignatius Reilly, 30 years old, University educated, lives at home with his long-suffering mother. The dialogue in this book is spot on. One word of caution: Don't think of this book as a comedy. I did, expecting to find many laughs. There aren't. There was one laugh-out-loud funny moment (for me) when the Reilly character is fantasizing about what he would do while on a bus ride, but that's it. I found Ignatius Reilly to be a little frustrating as a protagonist, as were some of the supporting characters. In the end, however, the circumstances around every major character change, and I enjoyed their progressions. Read A Confederacy of Dunces if: You are a 30-something person who still lives at home with his parents and haven't held down a "real" job. OR if you can relate in some way to this situation. Do not read A Confederacy of Dunces if: You are expecting a laugh-out-loud belly-buster. It's not a barn-burner of a novel. But it rings true. And books like this are hard to come by. A shame the author only wrote two before taking his own life. 5/5

4 people found this helpful

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