I have just finished reading Confederacy of Dunces. At 41 years old, I have no heistation - not a moment's - in shouting as loudly as possible that this is, quite simply, the worst piece of utter cr*p I have ever read.



I am open-mouthed in complete astonishment that anyone can say this is anywhere near approaching `good' or even `readable'. It is just cr*p. There is no alternative but to resort to the vernacular. So, the author committed suicide because no-one would publish it? Really, you don't say? If I'd have been around, I would have shot him and saved him the bother. God in Heaven, I was ready to commit suicide within 50 pages! There is not an ounce of skill in this; no rhyme nor reason. What is the point of this book? It starts nowhere, it goes nowhere, it ends nowhere. The lead character, Ignatius J Reilly, is as unlikeable and unbelievable as he is fat. Other characters just drift in and out like ... I don't know what. I am lost for words to describe how turgid this waste of paper is.



The dialogue is just ridiculous. It doesn't make sense. At the start, Ignatius and his mother have the most nonsensical conversation that alternates, line by line, between togetherness, hatred, stupidity... And then much later in the book, Ignatius has some seemingly drug-induced psycho-babble between himself and an effete Dorian Greene. It is IMPOSSIBLE to even follow this dialogue, let alone make sense of it. It is the sort of stuff you'd expect a 12-year-old to write, it really is.



One reviewer on Amazon says he farted he laughed so much. I sat frowning at how such rubbish ever made it into print.



I had the Penguin version with the striped box of popcorn on the front. If you have yet to buy this book (declare bankruptcy to avoid the prospect), flick to page 271 and read from the top to the end of the chapter on page 283, or as far as you can get before the bookshop staff get restless. If you haven't been put off by these pages, then, OK, this book is for you. God help you.



I admit that I raised my personal rating from one-out-of-ten to two, purely because I thought: there must be a point to this, there must be something at the end that will make me think this was worth my time. But no. Nothing.



Clearly the author John Kennedy Toole was a closet gay, but he conveys his baggage (understandable for the era) in the Ignatius character in the most revolting ways.



Don't ever, ever, ever waste time or money on this piece of cr*p.