John Kennedy Toole's "A Confederacy of Dunces": A Classic Novel

Uisgeovid: Walker Percy hat gut daran getan, sich für das Manuskript einzusetzen und einen Verlag zu finden für den damals bereits verstorbenen Autor. Wofür mag wohl der Pulitzer Preis vergeben worden sein ... Trotz der Darstellung verschiedenster chaotischer Zustände oder Bedingungen, unter denen die Protagonisten leben müssen, trotz der arroganten Intelligenz der Hauptfigur und trotz aller unfreiwilliger (Sprach-)Komik verweist der Roman zusammen mit dem intelligenten Hintergrund der "Produktionen" seines Helden verweist der Roman liebevoll auf eine amerikanische Realität, die mit zuweilen spitzer Feder, aber zuweilen auch mit Hilfe von Komik kritisiert wird. Wir wollen den Roman jedoch auch gerne vor dem Hintergrund einer gewissen "Oblomowerei" lesen, denn gewiss hatte der Autor Ilja Iljitsch Oblomow vor Augen, als er seinen Ignatius als zwar oberfaulen, jedoch hinterhältig begabten Intellektuellen schildderte.

Germany on Oct 15, 2023

Mesabear: Then became a bit hard-going. Supposedly Billy Connolly found it hilarious - so I thought I would as I think he’s hilarious. Not so 😂

United Kingdom on Sep 21, 2023

Cindy M. BrownCindy M. Brown: I couldn't put it down. The things that came out of Ignatius' mouth were hysterical. Many times I found myself throwing my head back unable to read for a few seconds because I was laughing so hard. Jones was equally as funny. I love this book. "Oh Fortuna!" HAHAHA

United States on Sep 20, 2023

Ian Kerr: I enjoyed the authors use of the English language , as the main character was supposed to be well read .
Some parts were very comical , and the book , as a whole , deserves a thumbs up . Recommended by a relative , who had read it 20 years previous .

United Kingdom on Aug 28, 2023

Verseucht: Excellent

Japan on Aug 16, 2023

Star Bright: I thought this book would be funny but my sense of humour has not been activated. Neither in my opinion does it flow easily and for that reason it doesn’t make enjoyable reading.

United Kingdom on Aug 05, 2023

Joseph D. Zillmer: I laughed, cried, and laughed again. The voice actor for Ignatius IS IGNATIUS! One of the best audible books I have listened to, and I usually listen to 3-4 a month.

United States on Apr 01, 2023

S. Stewart: What an incredible story. I can't believe it has been around all these years and I have only recently become aware of it. I bought this disc version because I was taking a trip and needed some "company" as I was a solo driver. The book is so good and so entertaining that I was sorry to arrive at my destination going and coming home. I will treasure this book as being one of the best I have ever heard and will now purchase a paperback copy as I must be able to see and be able to refer back to the portions that I most enjoy. The writing is superb and the author's use of language is outstanding. I have never had a book with characters so wonderfully well imagined. As an adult, I have not had the pleasure of having someone read to me. This audio version gave me the opportunity of experiencing what privileged children get to enjoy at the knee of a literate and caring parent. The reader of this particular version of the book is extremely skilled at using different voices to truly make the characters come alive. I think this must be about the best monetary investment I have made in a long time as I can't quite talking about how much I have enjoyed the book.

United States on Dec 18, 2019

Antoinette Klein: Ignatius Reilly is one of the most unusual and truly unique characters I have come across in novels. Exceedingly obese, self-centered, disengaged from society by choice, hygienically-challenged.....this is not the typical protagonist a reader would pull for. But, there is something very appealing about this corpulent and unfashionably dressed man from New Orleans that keeps the reader's attention. Like a terrible wreck on the highway that you can't turn away from and secretly hope to see carnage, this is a man you just can't turn away from no matter how loathsome he gets.

Whether he is musing on his preference to be a Negro (this is the 1960's) and not have the white man's burden of struggling to attain a place in the misguided middle class, leading factory workers in open revolt, inventing a new filing system, or pushing a hot dog cart through the French Quarter, Ignatius commands your attention.

Whether this is a tragic comedy or a comic tragedy is debatable, but one thing is certain: you will find yourself laughing out loud on just about every page. The author's clever use of language, the well-defined secondary characters, and the pure genius of the tale itself...

United States on Nov 21, 2011

Lynn Hoffman, author:Radiation Days: A Comedy: New Orleanian Ignatius J. Reilly is monstrously fat. The corners of his mouth sink "into little folds filled with dasaproval and potato chip crumbs". The reader can almost smell his stale odor wafting off the page. He's lazy, unbearably prudish and arrogant, a thirty something agoraphobic who lives at home with his mother and writes hilariously bad prose in the service of a pretend book on medeival and modern civilizations.

He is shrill and dishonest, both selfish and self-deluded. And his mother insists that this hypochondriacal, gluttonous blob find himself a job. Most of the rest of the book is the story of Ignatius' trying to fit himself-a roundish amorphous peg-into a series of square occupational holes.

The book's ongoing joke is that no one whom he meets in his series of adventures is much more appealing than he is. There is the seventy-ish Miss Trixie desperately trying to retire, Miss Trixie's masochistically inept boss at the decaying Levy Pants Company, We have the hysterically overdrawn Dorian Greene, Queen of the French Quarter and the mercenary Miss Lee, pornographer and tavern keeper.
Ignatius' family is similarly creepy: Mom conspires to have him...

United States on Aug 30, 2006