A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole, Barrett Whitener (Read by)

From Barnes & Noble

Published a decade after the death of the author, this wildly inventive comic masterpiece features one of the most unforgettable characters in modern fiction: Ignatius Reilly, a mammoth misfit Medievalist hilariously at odds with the 20th-century world.

From the Publisher

Released by Louisiana State University Press in April 1980, A Confederacy of Dunces is nothing short of a publishing phenomenon. Turned down by countless publishers and submitted by the author's mother years after his suicide, the book won the 1981 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Today, there are over 1,500,000 copies in print worldwide in eighteen languages." "Set in New Orleans, A Confederacy of Dunces outswifts Swift, one of whose essays gives the book its title. As its characters burst into life, they leave the region and literature forever changed by their presences - Ignatius and his mother; Miss Trixie, the octogenarian assistant accountant at Levy Pants; inept, wan Patrolman Mancuso; Darlene, the Bourbon Street stripper with a penchant for poultry; Jones, the jivecat in space-age dark glasses. Satire and farce animate A Confederacy of Dunces; tragic awareness ennobles it." "Louisiana State University Press celebrates A Confederacy of Dunces' twentieth year with this anniversary edition, which includes a new introduction by Andrei Codrescu that examines the relationship of this modern-day classic to the city whose pulse it so brilliantly captures.

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

Time

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

Henry Kisor

The hero of John Kennedy Toole's incomparable comic classic is one Ignatius J. Reilly, "huge, obese, fractious, fastidious, a latter-day Gargantua, a Don Quixote of the French Quarter. His story bursts with wholly original characters, denizens of New Orleans' lower depths, incredible true-to-life dialogue, and the zaniest series of high and low comic adventures." -- Chicago Sun-Times

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."

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."

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."

Chicago Sun-Times - Henry Kisor

What a roaring, rollicking, foot stomping wonder this book is.

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