A Confederacy of Dunces is an American comic masterpiece. John Kennedy Tooles hero, one Ignatius J. Reilly, is 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, incredibly true-to-life dialogue, and the zaniest series of high and low comic adventures (Henry Kisor, Chicago Sun-Times).