About this title: Ignatius J. Reilly, a grossly overweight medieval scholar who lives with his mother, is forced to seek employment when she can no longer tolerate his laziness. His disdainful encounters with the modern culture of New Orleans, his habitual misunderstanding of its inhabitants (some of them no less eccentric than himself) and his often hypocritical efforts at scholarly success make him one of the most memorable comic characters of modern literature.
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Edition: Rev Black Cat ed.
Binding: Mass-market paperback
Publisher: Grove Press
Date Published: 1982
ISBN-13:9780394179698ISBN:0394179692
Description: Good. No dust jacket as issued. some wear. all pages readable. Mass market (rack) paperback. Glued binding. 405 p. Audience: General/trade. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Grove Press
Date Published: 1982
ISBN-13:9780140109344ISBN:014010934X
Description: Acceptable. MAY HAVE COVER WEAR, SPINE CREASES, HIGHLIGHTING, UNDERLINING & PAGES YELLOWED FROM AGE. FASTER SERVICE FROM US! ! ! read more
Description: Acceptable. Book is in good reading condition. Cover has wear at edges and corners, and may have creases. Spine has wear at edges and may have creases. read more
Description: Fair. 0394178009 Condition: ACCEPTABLE. (Book has a combination of the following characteristics: former library book, heavy cover wear, name written inside cover, considerable underlining/highlighting, remainder mark, pages tanning / curling, etc. Overall, the book is in rough shape and should only be purchased as a reading copy. This is a blanket description. Please e us if you require a specific, detailed description of the book condition. We will typically respond within one week of your ... read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Grove Weidenfeld
Date Published: 1987
ISBN-13:9780802130204ISBN:0802130208
Description: Good. Text is clean, bright and unmarked. Binding is tight and square. Slight curl to cover. Careful packaging and fast shipping. We recommend EXPEDITED MAIL for even faster delivery! read more
Description: Very Good. Grove Press, TPB, 1980, reprint soft cover published 1998. Probably unread, clena, tight, no markings on text, small stain on page edge, minor wear. read more
Description: Good. 0802130208 22555 PB: spine creased, text clean, cover has slight shelf wear-allow up to 21 business days for standard USPS media m ai l. wt1lbpf. read more
Description: Fair. Book shows definite signs of wear. Pages may be marked and/or written but complete. Cover may be missing or damaged and spine cracked. read more
"One fine morning Fortuna spun my wheel of luck and put me on a flight to NYC. The guy who was sitting next to me, refusing to indulge in modern day perversities like movies or music, pulled out his book and sat down reading. He must have been enjoying it immensely, because he kept laughing out loud every now and then. Pretty soon he realized that some people had started turning around to give him weird looks. Poor guy didn't have an option but to put the book down. But Fortuna, being the degenerate wanton that she can sometimes be, was in a mood to play a cruel joke on him. Even after he had put the book down, he couldn't help suddenly bursting out into laughter. More stares. More embarrassment. That was when I noticed that the book he had been reading was 'A Confederacy of Dunces'. And since I had read that book only a week before that, I could understand that he wasn't a nutcase.
(To those who haven't read this book yet):- WARNING: 'A Confederacy of Dunces' is extremely hilarious and is known to have caused uncontrollable laughter in several cases. Read it in public at your own risk!"
"Many claim it is the most valid depiction of New Orleanians ever. My favorite quote comes from Ignatius's extremely short tenure as a college teacher: "I could never have possibly read over the illiteracies and misconceptions burbling from the dark minds of those students. It will be the same wherever I work." This from a professor who did not need to read the papers to know the most appropriate usage of them was to dump them "out of the window and right onto the students' heads." As Ignatius says: "The college was too small to accept this act of defiance against the abyss of contemporary academia." In my experience, most colleges still are."
"Easily the funniest book I've ever read. A masterful fugue of high and low comedy, the novel traces the exploits of Ignatius J. Reilly, thwarted author, philosopher, and medievalist, as he is tragically forced to divert energy from the writing of his magnum opus - a comparative history that will astonish a benighted world - in order to get a job. Interlaced through Ignatius's epic employment journey (including stints as a hot dog vendor and filing clerk) is a cast of New Orleans eccentrics teetering on the underbelly of humanity. Thwarting Ignatius at every turn are his nemesis, former classmate Myrna Minkoff, with whom he exchanges frequent and furious letters, and his antagonist, the hapless Patrolman Mancuso, who has the audacity to mistake Ignatius for a vagrant.
The minor characters are drawn with a riotous precision reminiscent of Dickens; actually, the way they all come together at the end in a sort of circuitous unity is even more reminiscent of Dickens. However, no character ever conceived could match the genius that is Ignatius. A more pompous, ungrateful, obnoxious windbag is hard to imagine, yet Ignatius captivates partly because he IS so appalling. I made the mistake of reading this on an airplane once, and people three rows away turned around to see who was shrieking. It's the only novel that has brought me to actual tears of laughter. And appropriately so, as beneath every stream of comedy is an undercurrent of tragedy, and the world - even the motley world of New Orleans - holds no place for a uselessly over-educated, dysfunctional misfit like Ignatius.
It's interesting to note that John Kennedy O'Toole committed suicide in 1969 without ever seeing his work published. His mother discovered the manuscript after his death and finally saw it published in 1980. It won the Pulitzer Prize in 1981. A few years ago I attended a panel discussion with several of O'Toole's former colleagues and friends, who said some of the descriptions of Ignatius strongly resembled one of their colleagues. Someone in the audience asked if that colleague ever recognized himself in the work, and the friend replied, "Oh no - he'd never read this sort of novel!" In fact, neither would Ignatius."
"A weird and wonderful book. Truly, I've never read anything like it. This novel has some of the crispest, most well-painted characters I've ever read, and although I wasn't "laughing out loud" as much as the reviewers on the back cover promised, it is definitely funny as hell, and a completely cringe-worthy story. The character of Ignatius Reilly will haunt me. We all know people like this -- the over-educated, miserable, socially dysfunctional outcast who is so cut off from the world that he manages see everyone else through some sick, distorted prism in which he is only sane person, and everyone else is simply beneath him. In this case, the character also weighs 300 pounds, and alternates between selling hotdogs, screaming at his mother, and lying around on stained, mildewy sheets as he writes his manifesto besmirching the modern world. Wow. The real sadness is the story of the author, who wrote this book and never showed it to a soul before committing suicide when he was 32. His mom discovered it, and later gave it to an English professor who got it published. In 1980, it won the Pulitzer. Poor guy. I'm very curious about how close this book was to his own life, as you could not draft these characters without some very specific models.
I wouldn't recommend this book to just anyone, but if you have a sense of humor and an appreciation for New Orleans culture, crazy characters, or super-dorks, you may love it. I am definitely glad I read it."
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