A Confederacy of Dunces
Decide its fate
The record
Time
An eveningA season391 pages, about 8 hours: the length of 1.2 typical books on the shelf.
Getting in
Walk right inSteep climbOne reader reports it grew hard to keep reading once Ignatius’s habits are established early in the book.
What it gives
Plot and actionIdeas to live byIn 16 reviews from critics and book blogs, one credits the plot and 5 credit the ideas or a change in how they live.
One of a kind
Others do thisNothing else doesWalker Percy’s foreword calls Ignatius Reilly a fat Don Quixote, and a New Yorker essay likens Toole to Catch-22’s Joseph Heller.
The case for it
on Burma Jones
“grandly funny Burma Jones, an unwilling black janitor and sidewalk shill”
Kirkus Reviews, 1980 on Ignatius Reilly
“It’s hard to imagine anyone more fully rounded than Toole’s monstrous hero, Ignatius J. Reilly”
Jonathan Rosenbaum · The Soho News, 1980 on Ignatius’s humanity
“Ignatius is the most human part of Toole’s novel”
a Substack review on the supporting cast
“Trixie, Darlene, Lana, etc. just leap off the page and into the imagination.”
a book blog
The case against
on the first chapter
“the end of the first chapter, I wanted him to get hit by a bus”
a book blog on the length
“Enduring four hundred pages worth of this whiny, flatulent manchild”
a book blog on Ignatius Reilly
“Ignatius is exactly the character you expect him to be”
Tom Bissell · The New Yorker, 2021 on the editing
“I think it could have done with a better edit, and a few little rewrites”
a Substack review
