A green hunting cap squeezed the top of the fleshy balloon of a head. The green earflaps, full of large ears and uncut hair and the fine bristles that grew in the ears themselves, stuck out on either side like turn signals indicating two directions at once. So enters one of the most memorable characters in recent American fiction.
The hero of John Kennedy Toole's incomparable, Pultizer Prize-winning comic classic is one Ignatius J. Reilly: '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)
'A masterwork of comedy'.The novel astonishes with its inventiveness; it lives in the play of its voices.''New York Times Book Review