Whenever I’m heading to the French Quarter near sunset, I think of Ignatius, grumpy troublemaker extraordinaire, taking a moment for that sumptuous sight of the sun dipping below the Mississippi.
One of my favorite descriptions concerns Patrolman Mancuso, dressed only in Bermuda shorts and a T-shirt, riding a borrowed motorcycle up St. Its ability to render New Orleans to lifeĬountless writers have taken on New Orleans in a variety of genres - history, travel writing, poetry - and attempted to describe the physical dimensions of this city, and Toole is one of the best to ever do it. If you haven’t read it - or even if you have - what follows are five reasons why you should make A Confederacy of Dunces your essential summer reading. “Then he wandered into the Penny Arcade on Royal Street to see whether any new games had been installed.”īut Toole’s novel is much more than the overweight, green-hunting-cap-wearing, 30-year-old Reilly it’s a novel about this city at a certain time and place that continues to resonate today.Ī Confederacy of Dunces encompasses the French Quarter and its mash-up of food and drink and people from this country and many others the way that you can move from one neighborhood to another and be perpetually entranced by all that is going on and the distinctly New Orleanian whirl of light and sound that marks everything from Mardi Gras to late-night festivities at a Mid-City bar. In the end, despite your best efforts, you can’t really help but like him. Flawed, cocky, and always ready to fling verbal barbs, Ignatius is an enigmatic and frustrating character, but he’s also like that annoying friend in college who’s regularly (if not always purposefully) the sharpest and funniest person in the room. If you’ve read John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces (1980), he’s likely etched in your memory.
I found my mind drifting to a cherished fictional character named Ignatius J. As we banked past the Superdome, a favorite line from the novel that made Reilly famous came to mind: “Outside, Bourbon Street was beginning to light up.” Perhaps it was just the drowsiness that accompanies long summer afternoon drives, but I found my mind drifting to a cherished fictional character named Ignatius J. As my eyelids drooped on the last leg of a road trip that began in New Orleans and encompassed a number of stops in the southeast, I was much relieved to hit the outer perimeter of this city.
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