I wrote a large review of this book a few days ago and lost the lot due a web-server config problem, so here is my I-can’t-be-arsed-and-I’m-tired-it’s-Friday alternative review. It was a book I’d heard mentioned on lots of people’s favourite lists, and had it pegged as in the same boat as A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court – mostly due to the language of the title. The cover picture of a box of popcorn sitting on an ample hairy belly should have been the giveaway, but when I hit page one and it described a lazy overweight fellow still living with his alcoholic mother in 1960’s New Orleans, I realised I had been totally fooled. I read on regardless. 
This is not the cover on my copy. It says more about my morality and sensibilities than about the quality of the book when I say that I found the book annoying and Ignatius to be a thoroughly unlikeable individual till about half way through A Confederacy of Dunces. At some point I started to pity him, and towards the end, glad that the story had started to congeal into a pleasing climax, I almost empathised with the ingracious, blustering cartoon-character of outrage that he was. I don’t think this book is the cak-fest that many seem to feel, but there are some wonderful laugh-aloud one liners that could have come straight from the mouth of Oscar Wilde. Never has there been a literary character so outraged about the pop-culture world all around him, and yet so deluded. I’ll give it a 3.5.