On the HahaFiction shelf
A Confederacy of Dunces
Audiobook available · 13 hr 33 min
Ignatius J. Reilly lives with his mother in New Orleans and has exhaustive objections to modern life. When she pushes him into employment, a clothing factory and a hot-dog cart become fresh occasions for trouble.
From the publisher’s blurb
“He is in violent revolt against the entire modern age.”Read the full description at Grove Press, publisher description
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What makes it funny?
Asked for identification, Ignatius gives a policeman a lecture on the city’s vices. The encounter becomes a public spectacle, with sheet music and a dangling lute string pressed into service as weapons.
The comedy at work
Ignatius brings the language of a great intellectual dispute to clothes, food and minor inconveniences. His certainty about everyone else’s shortcomings keeps colliding with his own helplessness, vanity and digestive complaints.
Try this if…
An appetite for abrasive characters helps here. Elaborate speeches, local voices and overlapping misadventures give readers plenty to enjoy even when Ignatius himself is being intolerable.
Good to know
Coarse language, sexual references and bodily humor run through this adult comedy.
A few distinguishing details
- Medieval philosophy meets a New Orleans hot-dog cart.
- A grand social critic still depends on his mother.
More funny adventure
Sources & further reading
- LSU Press publication history
Publisher
- Kirkus review
Review
- Grove Press description and opening excerpt
Publisher
- Blackstone audiobook record
Publisher
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