A Confederacy of Dunces

by John Kennedy Toole | Literature & Fiction |
ISBN: 0802130208 Global Overview for this book
Registered by miss-muddie on 3/18/2005
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3 journalers for this copy...
Journal Entry 1 by miss-muddie on Friday, March 18, 2005
Editorial Review from Amazon.com;

"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 Lana Lee 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

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This is one of my all-time favourite books and I hope in releasing, it will find another big fan . . .

Journal Entry 2 by MadamMuck from Longreach, Queensland Australia on Saturday, March 19, 2005
Picked up at Monthly meetup.

Journal Entry 3 by MadamMuck from Longreach, Queensland Australia on Monday, May 9, 2005
Just a quick update, I have finally started reading this and am a little perplexed. I am having some trouble getting into this but at the same time was explaining it in detail to my other half on the way to work this morning. I find Ignatius to be an insufferable know-it-all, and would dearly like to slap him a few times.

Oh well back to the book, will let you know when I have finished.

Journal Entry 4 by MadamMuck from Longreach, Queensland Australia on Saturday, May 14, 2005
Well I got through, I am still torn about this one, I still want to slap Ignatius silly but the ending with Myrna the Minx was very humorous.

Journal Entry 5 by cackleberry on Saturday, May 21, 2005
This book caught at the Brisbane Convention Committee Meeting held at MadamMuck's house 11am Saturday 21 May 2005.

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