When Walker Percy penned these prophetic words in his foreword to the firstedition of A Confederacy of Dunces he could not have known just how wideTooles world ... » 

When Walker Percy penned these prophetic words in his foreword to the firstedition of A Confederacy of Dunces he could not have known just how wideTooles world of readers would become. Released by Louisiana State UniversityPress in April 1980 A Confederacy of Dunces is nothing short of a publishingphenomenon. Turned down by countless publishers and submitted by the authorsmother years after his suicide the book won the 1981 Pulitzer Prize forFiction. Today there are over 1500000 copies in print worldwide in eighteenlanguages.Tooles lunatic and sage novel introduces one of the most memorable charactersin American literature Ignatius Reilly whom Percy dubs slob extraordinary amad Oliver Hardy a fat Don Quixote a perverse Thomas Aquinas rolled into one who is in violent revolt against the entire modern age. Ignatius ireexplodes when his mother backs her car into another automobile. The owner ofthe damaged vehicle insists on payment Mrs. Reilly demands that her son ceasewatching television and writing in his Big Chief tablet and get a job.Set in New Orleans A Confederacy of Dunces outswifts Swift one of whoseessays gives the book its title. As its characters burst into life they leavethe region and literature forever changed by their presences Ignatius andhis mother Miss Trixie the octogenarian assistant accountant at Levy Pantsinept wan Patrolman Mancuso Darlene the Bourbon Street stripper with apenchant for poultry Jones the jivecat in spaceage dark glasses. Satire andfarce animate A Confederacy of Dunces tragic awareness ennobles it.Louisiana State University Press celebrates A Confederacy of Dunces twentiethyear withthis anniversary edition which includes a new introduction by AndreiCodrescu that examines the relationship of this modernday classic to the citywhose pulse it so brilliantly captures. «