A Confederacy of Dunces

by John Kennedy Toole Narrated by Barrett Whitener

Overview

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.

So enters one of the most memorable characters in recent American fiction.

The hero of John Kennedy Toole's incomparable, Pultizer Prize-winning comic classic is one Ignatius J. Reilly, an obese, self-absorbed, hapless Don Quixote of the French Quarter, whose half-hearted attempts at employment lead to a series of wacky adventures among the lower denizens of New Orleans. This book has become an American comic masterpiece.

Editorial Reviews

Library Journal

Oooo-eeee! Toole's outrageous rambling farce comes to life with the wonderful voices of Arte Johnson--surely one of the greatest matches ever of the written to the spoken word. Toole's novel, written in the early 1960s and published posthumously in the early 1980s, is one of the great comic works of the century and still fresh 35 years later. Toole's finest achievement is protagonist Ignatius J. Reilly, a great intellectual and deadbeat glutton who roams the squalor and charm of New Orleans causing enormous chaos, selling a few hot dogs from his weenie wagon, and suffering a pyloric valve shutdown at the general looniness of the characters he meets in places like the Night of Joy nightclub. Johnson has created a unique voice for each of the many fantastic, overblown crazies woven into this wild story. It's unfortunate that the audio version is abridged. Still, the spirit of the original is here. Highly recommended for all listeners who love a great belly laugh at the human condition.--Barbara Valle, El Paso P.L., TX

Henry Kisor

What a roaring, rollicking, foot stomping wonder this book is.
—Chicago Sun-Times

Time

"If a book's price is measured against the laughs it provokes, A confederacy of Dunces is the bargain of the year."

Newsweek

"An astonishingly good novel, radiant with intelligence and artful high comedy."

San Francisco Chronicle

"A brilliant and evocative ovel."

New Republic

"A gem -- one of the funniest books ever written."

The Washington Post

"A corker, an epic comedy, a rumbling, roaring avalanche of a book."

The Boston Globe

"The dialogue is superbly mad. You simply sweep along, unbelievably entranced."

The Baltimore Sun

"The episodes explode one after the other like fireworks on a story night. No doubt about it, this book is destined to become a classic."

Rolling Stone

"A Confederacy of Dunces has been reviewed almost everywhere, and every reviewer has loved it. For once, everyone is right."

Monitor Christian Science

"I found myself laughing out loud again and again as I read this ribald book."

Examiner Los Angeles Herald

"As hilarious as it indisputably is, A Confederacy of Dunces is a seriouis important work."

New York Times Book Review

"A masterwork of comedy.... The novel astonishes with its inventiveness, it lives in the play of its voices. A Confederacy of DUnces is nothing less than a grand comic fugue."

From the Publisher

Pulitzer Prize Winner

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

“A corker, an epic comedy, a rumbling, roaring avalanche of a book.”—The Washington Post

“An astonishingly good novel, radiant with intelligence and artful high comedy.”—Newsweek

“One of the funniest books ever written . . . it will make you laugh out loud till your belly aches and your eyes water.”—The New Republic

“The episodes explode one after the other like fireworks on a stormy night. No doubt about it, this book is destined to become a classic.”—The Baltimore Sun

“The dialogue is superbly mad. You simply sweep along, unbelievably entranced.”—The Boston Globe

“An astonishingly original and assured comic spree.”—New York Magazine

“As hilarious as it indisputably is, A Confederacy of Dunces is a serious and important work.”— Los Angeles Herald Examiner

"If a book's price is measured against the laughs it provokes, A Confederacy of Dunces is the bargain of the year." — Time

“A brilliant and evocative novel.” —San Francisco Chronicle

"I found myself laughing out loud again and again as I read this ribald book." —Christian Science Monitor

“Crazy magnificent once-in-a-blue-moon first novel. . . . There is a touch of genius about Toole and what he has created.” —Publishers Weekly

“A masterpiece of character comedy . . . brilliant, relentless, delicious, perhaps even classic.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Astonishing, extravagant, lunatic, satiric, and peculiar, but it is above all genuine, skillful, and unsentimentally comic.” —Booklist

Ignatius J. Reilly is Bette Midler’s favorite hero of fiction (Vanity Fair, August 2008)

Product Details

BN ID:	2940169603521
Publisher:	Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Publication date:	01/01/2007
Edition description:	Unabridged
Sales rank:	777,216

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