He taught at Hunter College, the University of Southwestern Louisiana, and Dominican College in New Orleans.

Reilly is Bette Midler's favorite hero of fiction (Vanity Fair, August 2008)Ībout the Author John Kennedy Toole, a native of New Orleans, graduated from Tulane University and received a master's degree in English from Columbia University. 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. There is a touch of genius about Toole and what he has created.' - Publishers Weekly 'A masterpiece of character comedy. 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. No doubt about it, this book is destined to become a classic.'- The Baltimore Sun 'The dialogue is superbly mad. 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. 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. the novel astonishes with its inventiveness. His story bursts with wholly original characters, denizens of New Orleans' lower depths, incredibly true-to-life dialogue, and the zaniest series of high and low comic adventures (Henry Kisor, Chicago Sun-Times).

Reilly, is huge, obese, fractious, fastidious, a latter-day Gargantua, a Don Quixote of the French Quarter. John Kennedy Toole's hero, one Ignatius J. it is nothing less than a grand comic fugue.'- The New York Times Book ReviewĪ Confederacy of Dunces is an American comic masterpiece. Reilly, a 'Don Quixote of the French Quarter', it is a masterpiece of human folly and tragedy.īook Synopsis Winner of the Pulitzer Prize About the Book This Pulitzer Prize-winning novel has sold over three-quarters of a million copies and continues to earn critical acclaim.

A confederacy of dunces review